Being a Tracey Ullman fan and also having enjoyed other John Waters films, I thought I would like this one, but I really thought it was a waste of time and money. There was a lot of potentially really funny stuff in the movie, but the acting and/or direction really fell flat. Tracey Ullman was just ho-hum in her characterizations which I had thought would be ROFLMAO but they weren't. There was not enough contrast between her before-concussion persona and after. She would have been way better if more uptight before and more gross-out nymphomaniac after. Maybe this movie should be remade, with a bigger budget and better joke timing, and let the great actors who can do multiple characterizations like Tracey Ullman really show their good stuff!

Depressed puritanical housewife Sylvia Stickles (Tracey Ullman) with a nice but horny husband (Chris Isaak) and a HUGE breasted kid (Selma Blair) is hit on the head one day. It immediately turns her into a raving sex addict and she finds there's a whole group of people like her led by Ray Ray Perkins (Johnny Knoxville).First off I should mention I saw the 84 minute R rated cut and not the 89 minute NC-17 one. Some of the cuts were obvious as were the voice overdubs but I don't think it changed the movie a lot. What I saw was a typically strange John Waters film with plenty of good moments but it didn't totally work. The main problem is the script is all over the place! The first half of the movie is coherent but the film totally derails during the second half. Complications come on fast and furious and it all ends up not making a lot of sense. The movie is chockful of dialogue discussing frank sexual acts and some incredibly unsubtle imagery. Some of it works but, more often than not, it just doesn't hit its mark. A cameo by David Hasselhoff particularly makes no sense and isn't funny at all. Also the pacing here is atrocious--but that's not uncommon in a Water film. Acting really helps this one. Ullman is fearless here considering some of her very sexually explicit lines and costumes. Blair deserves a lot of credit for wearing these HUGE breasts and making the character sympathetic and believable. Isaak is given little to do but he's good. Best of all is Knoxville who has a real difficult role to play--and pulls it off. So, it has its moments but not enough of them. I can only give this a 5.

Over-the-top sex farce by John Waters is funny throughout the first half of the movie but loses the story and just uses sex pranks and disgusting stuff to fill up the last half. I expect to be offended when I see a Waters movie but the story has to be complete for any movie to be recommended by me and this one wasn't. The story is basically about a sexually repressed woman, played by Tracey Ullman, who gets an accidental concussion that turns her into a sex addict. She finds out that there are others and they are led by a character named Ray Ray(a sexual healer) played by Johnny Knoxville of Jackass fame. They lay in religious parallels like Ullman's character being the 12th apostle who's is supposed to bring them a new sex act to bring them to a glorious climax. Other religious stuff like putting down the 12 step program didn't set well with me. She gets knocked on the head again and brought back to her normal("neuter") self and this happens to other characters as well but then she gets brought back by another knock which is kind of strange. The group break up a sex addicts anonymous meeting and take over and this is where I kind of stopped liking the movie. They pretty much take over the area at this point and can't be stopped. Waters then throws in everything imaginable and it stops being funny. Definitely this is a revealing movie, but a little too over-the-top for my tastes. It's a dirty shame because if the story didn't fall apart it would have been a funny and worth-while movie experience despite it's many vulgarities.

A Dirty Shame (2004) * (out of 4) John Waters latest film has a woman (Tracey Ullman) being wacked on the head and turning into a sex addict. Waters can be very funny in some films but this isn't one and them and this is certainly the worst I've seen from him. Waters tries hard to recapture his early days but fails on all levels because the film isn't shocking and is fairly tame. The NC-17 rating and the films weakness comes from dirty language, which gets tiresome after the first ten minutes. You can tell Waters is trying hard to recapture his early days but all the humor comes off very forced and weak.