John Waters at low ebb. Spring is sprung, the sap is flowing, the birds twitter and the bees buzz, and the battle lines are drawn, straight through Middle America, between the sex maniacs and the neuters. ("Let's go sexin'!" vs. "I'm Viagra-vated and I'm not going to take it anymore!") All that's required is a bonk on the head to send one of the troops over to the other side, and another bonk to send him or her back again: sexed, unsexed, sexed, unsexed, ad nauseam, ad tedium. The premise permits Waters, self-anointed arbiter of bad taste, simultaneously to spoof and to salute the sexploitation films of the pre-hardcore era, some of which are showcased in post-bonking hallucinatory montages. The argument for the defense might suggest that, in its slapdash plot and slipshod production, the film is no dopier than the ones it spoofs and salutes; but the rebuttal to that would contend that its knowingness renders its dopeyness all the more objectionable: the dirty old man who fancies himself still as cute as the naughty little boy. The prodigiously gifted Tracey Ullman, resignedly slumming, has had little chance on the big screen to show what she can do, and has no chance here. She reminds us of what she has done on the small screen, however, with her throwaway utterance of the favorite oath of the fictitious Ruby Romaine, "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" With Johnny Knoxville, Chris Isaak, Selma Blair. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd