The most revolutionary decision John Waters ever made was to go mainstream. For most filmmakers, it would be ideal to make works that are embraced by the general public, but when it comes to Waters, it almost feels like an act of defiance. He was a filmmaker that made a career through being provocative, so much that his attempts to work in a more family-oriented sphere ultimately seems like he was intentionally trying to rebel against the status quo, which had essentially written him off as nothing but the peddler of putrid, pornographic-adjacent impurity. Cry-Baby is one of the small handful of films that exist as the fruit of Waters’ more endearing labour, a riveting musical teen comedy set in the 1950s, telling the story of a gang war between the Drapes and the Squares, rival factions of the Baltimore adolescent population, who wage a series of proxy battles in order to determine who is the dominant. Naturally, it never reaches the heights of Hairspray in terms of being one of the director’s more distinctly populist works that changed perceptions surrounding his artistry, but instead exists as a worthy successor, a hilarious and irreverent comedy with an abundance of heart and a genuine fondness for its material – but it’s rare to find a Waters film that does not have both of these components, Cry-Baby just places them front-and-centre, allowing audiences that would have previous vehemently rejected the idea of sitting through one of the director’s work. If there is any act more rebellious than persuading your harshest critics to actively seek out your work, then we’re unlikely to find it, with this film proving that even the most accessible works can contain slightly subversive elements, which only makes Waters’ films all the more interesting, and propels us to revisit them frequently.

Despite the tone and general storyline (and outright lack of shocking violence and simmering sexuality), Cry-Baby definitely does not imply that the director has softened with age, which often happens when notable provocateurs work for long enough. There wasn’t any distinctive moment where Waters suddenly “matured” out of making films that demonstrated his penchant for the shocking, especially when we see that even a film like this carries distinctive elements of his work, just reconfiguring them into something more keenly aware of its audience. Targetted at a much wider group than the enthusiasts of the director’s years working in the underground arthouse, it’s difficult to determine who Cry-Baby was aimed at, since it seems to be trying to appeal to everyone, but in particular those who hold puritanical views, since Waters refuses to let them get away with their supposed superior values, taking the opinions of those who criticized his work in the past, and distorting them into the most grotesquely hilarious caricatures of the supposed moral authority – and from this foundation he built this terrific musical comedy, a film that doesn’t just promote the idea of rebellion, but outright glamourizes it. There is a very clear agenda to this film, and one that assisted Cry-Baby in amassing a large group of supporters, drawn from audiences that may not have been all that interested in his work in the past, but finally manage to leap onto his wavelength through his carefully-calibrated satire on old-fashioned values that may be solid, but are hopelessly outdated, requiring the work of someone with as artistic a vision as Waters to fully shake them out and demonstrate how tradition isn’t always as stable as we’d like to imagine.

This version of Romeo and Juliet set to the backdrop of working-class Baltimore in the 1950s may seem simple at a cursory glance, but Waters makes it very clear that his intentions are far from just to tell a love story. Waters has many curiosities as a filmmaker (although the director would probably prefer the term “obsession”, as he has made very clear over the years), and whether it be a thrilling romance between lovers in rival faction groups, or the grotesque visages of ordinary people who conduct themselves in a manner totally unbecoming but still exceptionally entertaining, Waters packages several compelling ideas into this relative paltry running time, managing to introduce a range of themes while never leaving a single loose-end, which is one of the several reasons why, despite his reputation as some reckless provocateur, he is still a consummate professional who knows his audience well enough to ensure that there is not a single moment in this film that we are not entertained. Cry-Baby is much like Hairspray insofar as it is a love letter to a specific time in the past, with the director drawing on both his memories of Baltimore when he was a child, and the general history of his hometown to craft an unforgettable comedy that feels authentic to the core. No one can blend genres better than Waters, who makes a film that combines romance, comedy and music to form this fascinating comedy. It doesn’t even seem fair to call Cry-Baby a satire, since its intentions are far too pure to ever possess the jagged edge of some of the director’s other work – and some may argue the lack of this element is one of the primary reasons this film, as well as a few others he made around this time, seem to be so subversive, since they’re challenging in every conceivable way, without even putting in any effort to be anything other than happy-go-lucky tales of friendship and romance.

Waters has always had a talent for choosing the right performers for his films, to the point where they don’t even necessarily have to be actors in the first place. Cry-Baby is a multilayered tapestry populated by some of the director’s most interesting characters, played by a blend of regular collaborators (who we affectionately know as The Dreamlanders), and newcomers to the director’s oeuvre, many of them working with the director for the first and only time, but leaving a lasting impression that makes this some of their definitive work. The film is led by Johnny Depp, who was at the peak of his popularity – a teen heartthrob who was actively graduating to more serious fare (insofar as he wasn’t restricting himself solely to teen-oriented projects), he seemed the right person to bring Wade “Cry-Baby” Walker to life. So much of this performance feels very self-reflective, with Depp commenting on his own place as a teen idol in a way that immediately suggested that he’d grow to become one of our most chameleonic actors – how else can someone essentially play a character that they been portraying for several years, and still manage to reinvent it to feel entirely new? He is joined by an ensemble cast, including Ricki Lake (who Waters helped establish with Hairspray), Amy Locane and the unforgettable Kim McGuire in her only prominent film role before a run of minor appearances in smaller projects, and an eventual retirement from acting as a whole. Smaller roles played by the likes of Iggy Pop, Polly Bergen, Susan Tyrell and the ever-reliable Mink Stole only serve to help establish the peculiar tone of the film, Waters being well-aware of the calibre of actors he had working for him, and subsequently giving each one of them memorable work to do, rather than having them fade into the background.

Cry-Baby is a tremendous film, the kind of charming and irreverent comedy that Waters would ultimately end up making during a sojourn away from the more outwardly shocking subject matter, where he instead chose to covertly sneak his eccentric sense of humour into the film in more underhanded ways, utilizing what appears to be a family-friendly production to show many of the same themes that have persisted throughout his career. For the director’s devotees, Cry-Baby is a classic, serving as the charming musical comedy that was undoubtedly inspired by the films he watched growing up (or rather, those that he was allowed to watch, with some of his other influences being those that he consumed in more informal settings), and for newcomers, it serves as a good entry point, albeit not for those who aren’t aware of how perverse his sense of humour can be – so those who enjoy this film must hedge their expectations and go into his earlier films with an open mind, since none of them are quite like this, either in tone or content, outside of the obvious Hairspray, which is a clear forerunner to this film in terms of being brief diversions out of the mainstream for the director. There is so much value in Cry-Baby, a charming and very funny film that never takes itself too seriously, and knows how to have a good time, containing an infectious energy that every viewer will undoubtedly feel in the aftermath of this absolute delight.