FREE: CRY-BABY VHS!!!

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This John Waters' movie, set in Baltimore in 1954, is an attempt to repeat the formula of his "Hairspray" (1988), but this is a much less enjoyable picture. Like all Waters movies, it's about a battle between the good, disreputable people and the bad, conventional ones-in this case, a group of juvenile delinquents (called "drapes"), whose leader is a handsome rock and roller known as Cry-Baby (Johnny Depp), versus "the squares," represented by just about everybody else in town. Cry-Baby, a sensitive sort (he lost both his parents to the electric chair), falls in love with a square girl, Allison (Amy Locane), and the film devotes itself to exploring the question, Can their forbidden love survive in a world that just doesn't understand? Unfortunately, almost everything in the movie feels flat and enervated. It's indifferently, mechanically paced; the musical numbers are ineptly staged; and Depp isn't a very exciting presence. Waters seems to be going through the motions: "Cry-Baby" is all attitude, a rote recitation of mildly naughty jokes he's made before. Maybe cute people don't inspire him. The bizarre supporting cast includes Polly Bergen, former porn queen Traci Lords, Kim McGuire (as a spectacularly ugly girl called Hatchet-Face), Susan Tyrrell, Ricki Lake, Iggy Pop, Troy Donahue, Joey Heatherton, Joe Dallesandro, David Nelson, and celebrity ex-con Patty Hearst.