Or Johnny Depp: The Musical. Depp does his finest Dean as the rebel dark
boy in town who ends up in a juvenile detention centre. The film marks a
transition between Waters’ earlier movies, all pastiche evocations
of 1960s kitsch, and his more recent (and less musical) work which
leaves behind the Pucci colours and local radio sounds of Hairspray for
the darker social commentary of Pecker and Cecil B Demented. Cry Baby
has the pastiche, if not the panache, of Hairspray, but also explores
the darker side of troubled teendom.
