Cry Baby

Cult director John Waters presents a tale of young love in 1950s Baltimore in this kitsch, comic musical. Square Alison (Amy Locane) is the epitome of niceness until she falls for bad-boy orphan ‘Cry-baby’ Walker (Johnny Depp). She discovers the ‘drapes’ are good people inside – but her old square pals are bent on winning her back at any cost. With Traci Lords, Iggy Pop, Ricki Lake and Patty Hearst.
John Waters’s goofy, 1990 comedy about a Baltimore girl (Amy Locane) who can’t decide if she should remain “good” in her 1954 world or hang out with the motorcycle boys is funny in a scene-by-scene way, but doesn’t quite gel into the grand piece the director was hoping for. The cast is exceptionally likable, however, including Johnny Depp as an Elvis type and Iggy Pop as a chattering loony. The best material is set in a fringe world of bikers and losers on the outskirts of town, and Waters writes some hilarious sardonic dialogue for the characters. Cry-Baby is the last of Waters’s more undisciplined features; he followed it with the glossier but no less perverse Serial Mom.