Movie Review: Cry-Baby (1991)

A brief note: I wrote this review as well as one for Army of Darkness for a course on cult films that I took in the spring semester. I thought, why let them go to waste? So it’s time for Old Movie Reviews!

In the eighteen years between the release of Pink Flamingos in 1972 and the release of Cry-Baby in 1990, John Waters morphed from a shock director who would do anything–from including graphic oral sex to shots of his main actress eating dog feces–into a relatively mild musical director. Despite the fact that Waters toned down some of his most scandalous material does not mean that he donned a polo shirt and khakis and started making mainstream movies. Despite the popularity of Hairspray (1988), Waters’ films of the late 1980s and early 1990s are still culturally subversive even if they are not as shocking as his early trash films.

Cry-Baby, while not as blatantly shocking as Waters’s earlier films, still deals with the director’s signature subject matter: “normal” versus “trash.” In Cry-Baby, two 1950s Baltimore cultures clash, with a Romeo and Juliet-style romance at the center. The Drapes, rockabilly greasers from the wrong side of the tracks, drink and dance and have–gasp!–premarital sex, and their golden boy is Wade “Cry-Baby” Walker. The Squares, on the other hand, are good kids with rich parents and neat haircuts, kids who wouldn’t dream of doing such sinful things–or at least wouldn’t dream of getting caught at it. The Drapes and the Squares are constantly at odds with each other, but their skirmishes come to a head when Allison, a sweet Square girl, falls for Cry-Baby. After Allison’s jealous boyfriend, Baldwin, sees her singing with the Drapes, he starts a riot and gets Cry-Baby thrown in juvenile hall. Despite the obstacles, including a faked pregnancy by a girl obsessed with Cry-Baby, Allison and Wade end up together and the Squares are humiliated when Baldwin loses a chicken race to Cry-Baby.

The battle between the two subcultures is at the heart of Waters’s story, and as in Pink Flamingos, the freaks triumph over the buttoned-down bourgeoisie. The Drapes revel in their outsider status, throwing raucous parties overflowing with booze and rock-and-roll music. The men dress in leather and blue jeans and wear their hair in greased pompadours, while the women wear tight dresses, teased hair, and heavy makeup. This is a sharp contrast to the Squares, who look like they just came from the Ozzie and Harriet set; the Squares wear khakis and demure dresses, crew-cuts and penny loafers. The Squares are “good” kids, while the Drapes ride motorcycles and have babies out of wedlock. Drape culture is recognizably trashy, but the audience is meant to sympathize with the bad-but-unpretentious Drapes. The Squares, despite being representative of mainstream 1950s, are portrayed in such a way as to turn the audience off. You want the Drapes to win. This hearkens back to the rebel films of the 1950s, where the audience supports the misunderstood bad boys, like James Dean and Marlon Brando.

Cry-Baby has a cult audience for several reasons. Most obviously, John Waters as a director brings along his own cult audience. While Cry-Baby and Hairspray may be much more mainstream than his earlier films, he still has a devoted following. Waters’s signature trash-versus-mainstream subject matter is also attractive to cult viewers. The fact that both of these films are musicals also attracts a particular type of cult audience; indeed, both films have been adapted to Broadway musicals, and the Cry-Baby musical was nominated for several Tonys.

The misfit cast also helped attract a cult audience, and helped build a cult for one of the actors. At this point in his career, Johnny Depp was a reluctant teen idol mostly known for his run on the television series 21 Jump Street. Taking on the role of Cry-Baby was partly a rebellion against his teen idol status; he was reluctant to play the part at first, but director Waters told Depp that he should play it to make fun of being a teen idol. It’s a good thing that Depp played Cry-Baby, as he says the role is what helped him get the main part in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands, a role which catapulted him to stardom and gained him his own cult audience. Other actors in Cry-Baby include Traci Lords, a former underage porn star, as the bad girl; Ricki Lake, who had starred in the original Hairspray, as a pregnant teenage mother of two; Iggy Pop, a punk rock forefather, as Cry-Baby’s uncle; Patricia Hearst, the heiress who was kidnapped by and later joined the Symbionese Liberation Army, as a Square housewife; as well as recognizable 1950s teen heartthrobs Troy Donahue and David Nelson.

The subcultural subject matter, the quirky cast, the silly musical numbers, and Waters’s signature campy style all intersect to create a funny, endearing cult film.

Released by Universal Pictures, 1990. An Imagine Entertainment Film directed and written by John Waters and produced by Rachel Talalay. Original music by Patrick Williams. Running time: 85 Minutes. Rated PG-13.