Son of Precious

Exquisite Trash: Mo'Nique and Divine

I had little interest in seeing Precious until I read this critique:

What director Lee Daniels has done (quite deliberately, it appears) is take Dawn Davenport, the larger-than-life delinquent played by Divine, as a source of inspiration for Precious's tantrum-throwing, cha-cha heels-wearing mama Mary (Mo'Nique). Then he tosses in a beautiful light-skinned lipstick lesbian fairy godmother (Ms. Rain, played by Paula Patton), some cheesy escapist glamour-fantasy sequences (featuring a handsome boyfriend character the credits identify as "Tom Cruise"), and a comical all-girl chorus of wise-cracking GED English students who are assigned to write fairy tales. (Correction: One of the girls is a transsexual/transvestite, but it was unclear to me which direction she's going at this particular moment in her life.) Daniels' directorial sensibility is more garish and flamboyant than Waters' (this isn't kitchen-sink melodrama; it's everything plus the kitchen sink melodrama), but he displays a similar affection for his oversized female characters. Whatever its other ostensible subjects, this is a movie about drag queens acting out.

And then I saw this from John Waters:



Hell, if someone had told me it was a raunchy violent comedy and not some affected tear generator for Oprah's cult of mediocrity, I would have gone to see it twice.

And John Waters is America's most treasured sicko.