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Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
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Critic Consensus: No consensus yet.
All Critics (19) | Fresh (17) | Rotten (2) | DVD (4)
Polyester is definitely one of Waters's best films, and I highly recommend attending an 'Odorama' screening for a unique night at the movies.
By standards of Waters' gross-out features, this mildly amusing film is sedate, notable for the casting of fading movie star Tab Hunter and for introducing a gimmick called Odorama, scratch-and-sniff cards.
Polyester may be one of the few times when Waters tried to expand his cinematic language at the expense of his usual verbal variety
Stinks in all the right ways.
He makes you endure the grossest of the gross and you still laugh through the whole thing
A low-rent version of a Douglas Sirk 1950s soaper, with Divine being dragged through all the paces that might have been the lot of a glossy star of the era.
Waters' humor might be as broad as possible in Polyester, but it's also astute enough here to be funny from moment to moment.
Tab Hunter (Grease 2) earns praise for playing the dreamboat with such sincerity, and also for kissing Divine full on the lips. You don't win Oscars doing stuff like that.
Falls apart in the end.
Like a Fassbinder or Douglas Sirk movie made by John Waters, it is a mess with all his trademark filth, irritating overacting and ridiculous lack of structure and focus, and I guess it would be only amusing and worth seeing in the cinema for the Odorama scratch-and-sniff gimmick.
Super Reviewer
Classic John Waters. Bad in all the right ways.
I think that "Polyester" is John Waters' best movie. "Female Trouble" may have been funnier, but I prefer the elements in this softer creation to that earlier, meaner-spirited film. "Polyester" was the director's bridge between his last bad taste epic, "Desperate Living" (which was also great) and his first attempt at something mainstream, "Hairspray". So, what I think happened was a decrescendo of creative emotion. John Waters still has something to say about the lower middle-class here, but he used up the angry parts of his perspective when he was younger. Still, he wasn't quite ready for parody... In "Polyster", I suspect that the director wanted to utilize aspects of the culture that he had affection for. For one thing, Divine never played a more sympathetic character, and she was teamed up with Edith Massey, who was, in my opinion, the most memorable and lovable and enjoyable of all of the Waters' group. I think it's closer to call "Polyester" a tongue in cheek comedy than a satire. What's so funny about "Polyester" is how everybody acts around Francine, who is extremely kind, but ineffectual and dopey. Why is everybody so pre-occupied with tormenting her? I love how LaRue gets increasingly demented. And nobody can act humiliated and put-upon like Divine... Also, the sets are very warm and pleasant - I actually loved the Fishpaw house. Warm, funny, funny movie...
Cheap. Dirty. Sleazy. Whacked-out. Funny. Smelly. I enjoyed Polyester very much. Despite being made in 1981, it felt very 1970's low-budget. Offered in Odorama, where you scratch and sniff the appropriate scent on a card when a number flashes onscreen, totally gimmicky and fun! Divine makes a great bored and depressed housewife. Totally funny movie, with a beautiful message buried underneath all the sweaty smelly polyester.
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