Maybe I'm just too strange myself to really need Cho's constant message of self-love and self-empowerment, but I tired of it quickly as an adult, yet still harbour this quasi-nostalgic fondness that I had for Cho in my teens, even though I now find her incredibly boring, at best and, as an effete gay man of FTM history, I more often find her disgustingly offensive and hackneyed in her potential for appeal. She's best when she's lampooning the "child of immigrants" experience, even as one who was raised by non-assimilating English immigrant/Blitz-refugee grandparents, on some level I can relate to the ineffable strangeness of being reared in such close proximity with "the old country" and find it funny when it is; even so, she's been telling that joke, and all her others, for twenty years, and she seldom expands on it any more than she ever has.
I can see what Cho was trying to do here. At the heart of this film, she's clearly attempting to unite her message of self-love with the low-budget camp and highly exaggerated character of a classic John Waters film from the 1970s. In that sense, I can respect her goals, but the Waters classics had something, likely many things that this film seriously lacks. One of those things is the on-screen sincerity of the characters and the chemistry they have with other characters. For as ridiculous as Waters characters like dawn Davenport, Aunt Ida, Crackers, Connie & Raymond Marbles and all the others are, every single actor in those films managed to put every fibre of their essence into those characters to make you believe them, and you simply don't get that in BAM-BAM & CELESTE, except perhaps with Hendrix. Furthermore, your classic John Waters character is less a one-sided stereotype and more something so bizarre its out of a fairy-tale. Cho's goth-punk Celeste is pretty much the stereotype of the self-hating fat girl who falls into that scene to distract from her own self-perceived ugliness. Daniels' effete and promiscuous gay boy is the same vapid, shallow caricature that you'd expect. The stereotyped "Midwesterners" they encounter on the road-trip are less like any "Midwesterner stereotypes" I've actually met (what with living here for twenty years) and more like what somebody from one of the coasts might imagine, making it possibly the most offensive aspect of the entire thing.
Furthermore, Cho's message of self-love and implications of freak solidarity is completely lost when the once punky girl who justifiably hated everybody in that tiny town doesn't decide she's beautiful until she's transformed into something worlds more normal. The message that becomes clear is "you can't believe you're beautiful until everybody else believes you are".
I really wanted to like this, really wanted to believe that there was something else decent to come out of Cho since Notorious and before she decided to stop being an ally to the TS/TG in the GBLT community, but I guess my nostalgia is either simply doomed to be disappointed, or simply was unfounded in the first place. This isn't the worst film ever, but it's certainly unfunny and generally forgettable if not for every offense to the community she so desperately wants to stand in solidarity with.
I can see what Cho was trying to do here. At the heart of this film, she's clearly attempting to unite her message of self-love with the low-budget camp and highly exaggerated character of a classic John Waters film from the 1970s. In that sense, I can respect her goals, but the Waters classics had something, likely many things that this film seriously lacks. One of those things is the on-screen sincerity of the characters and the chemistry they have with other characters. For as ridiculous as Waters characters like dawn Davenport, Aunt Ida, Crackers, Connie & Raymond Marbles and all the others are, every single actor in those films managed to put every fibre of their essence into those characters to make you believe them, and you simply don't get that in BAM-BAM & CELESTE, except perhaps with Hendrix. Furthermore, your classic John Waters character is less a one-sided stereotype and more something so bizarre its out of a fairy-tale. Cho's goth-punk Celeste is pretty much the stereotype of the self-hating fat girl who falls into that scene to distract from her own self-perceived ugliness. Daniels' effete and promiscuous gay boy is the same vapid, shallow caricature that you'd expect. The stereotyped "Midwesterners" they encounter on the road-trip are less like any "Midwesterner stereotypes" I've actually met (what with living here for twenty years) and more like what somebody from one of the coasts might imagine, making it possibly the most offensive aspect of the entire thing.
Furthermore, Cho's message of self-love and implications of freak solidarity is completely lost when the once punky girl who justifiably hated everybody in that tiny town doesn't decide she's beautiful until she's transformed into something worlds more normal. The message that becomes clear is "you can't believe you're beautiful until everybody else believes you are".
I really wanted to like this, really wanted to believe that there was something else decent to come out of Cho since Notorious and before she decided to stop being an ally to the TS/TG in the GBLT community, but I guess my nostalgia is either simply doomed to be disappointed, or simply was unfounded in the first place. This isn't the worst film ever, but it's certainly unfunny and generally forgettable if not for every offense to the community she so desperately wants to stand in solidarity with.