Psycho Beach Party

Tivo-ed this movie off of HBO (which my kids have decided stands for "Horrible Body Odor" or "Horrible Butt Odor"; they think this is hysterically funny). I thought "Psycho Beach Party" was hysterically funny. It is very John Waters-esque in it's well intentioned campiness.

Lauren Ambrose (who plays Claire on "Six Feet Under") is superb as Florence 'Chicklet' Forrest. She suffers from split personality disorder and she does a fantastic job with her part. The movie would have been worth it just for her performance alone.

However, this film has even more than Lauren's great performance going on. Following the John Waters/Divine tradition there's a female cop character who is played by a man, Charles Busch. His performance isn't as blatantly over the top and weird as any of Divine's were, but he's a lot of fun to watch nonetheless. The sex scene with his character and the great surfer Kanaka (played by Thomas Gibson who is probably most famous for his role on the TV series "Dharma & Greg", but I know him more as Beauchamp Day in the "Tales of the City" miniseries) is a total riot. The obnoxious girl in the wheelchair is hilarious too. Who ever said that differently abled people can't don't have the right to be assholes too. Also, Chicklet's mom is a lot of fun too with her virgin/whore complex and fixation on perfection and cleanliness.

I'm sure Joe Bob Briggs would be disappointed that I failed to keep a knife fight and titty count, but I'm also sure that he'd say, "Check it out!"