VIDEO: The trailer for The Lollipop Generation
There's a fine line between the trash of early John Waters and just plain garbage. G.B. Jones, perhaps to her credit, ignores it completely. The first half of this badly shot, acted, dubbed, and edited tale of treat-sucking teen runaways battling exploitative pornographers plays like a tedious and self-indulgent home movie. (It is in part a compilation of road-trip footage Jones has taken over the past 15 years.) But things pick up when one of the young protagonists falls under the power of a giant black dominatrix (Vaginal Davis), maybe because at that point the format switches from Super 8 to video and the synchronous sound kicks in. The cutesy lollipop tone, meanwhile, gives way to squalid montages of rent boys in action that recall Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger. Such inspired moments turn out to be few and far between, though the punk soundtrack keeps the film's pulse beating.
