Cry Baby

Part of the special series JOHN WATERS: THE RESPECTABLE YEARS

Cry-Baby: “Kiss me! Kiss me hard.”
Allison: “I’ve never given a French kiss before.”
Cry-Baby: “Watch, it’s easy. You just open your mouth, and I open mine, and we wiggle our tongues together. And it feels real sexy.”
Allison: “I won’t get mononucleosis, will I?”

In 1950s Baltimore, two youth cultures collide: the wholesome “Squares” and the rebellious “Drapes.” Cry-Baby Walker (Johnny Depp), leader of the outsiders, falls in love with Allison (Amy Locane), a girl from a respectable family. It’s a romance that shakes the city’s rigid social boundaries. Motorcycles, rock ’n’ roll, and overzealous guardians of morality set the stage for a love story so melodramatic it becomes funny again.

John Waters gleefully exaggerates the aesthetics of the 1950s. His leather jackets shine too brightly, tears sparkle too perfectly, and the moral crusaders are so stiff they might as well have been pressed with an iron. The humor arises from this excess—and from the realization that rebellion is sometimes only a good song and a bad haircut away.