So for round two, to make it fairer, we made sure to exclude Divine for the cast list. On the Waters' side, we settled for "Cry Baby". And on the Ghibli side, "Graveyard of the Fireflies", whose chosen cover quote was "One of the greatest war films ever made."
Boy oh boy.
Not the right quote, babe.
Just to let you know, from the beginning, John Waters won.
Grave of the Fireflies
The movie starts with a tramp dieing in a subway station, and then floating away with a little girl into heaven. The screen fades out and we find out that just one month ago, this tramp and this little girl were brother and sister, were very much alive, and neither were tramps. In a live action film, we would be left intruiged. "What is going to lead these poor souls down the slippery slope to death?!" We would ask. But it's a cartoon, so the emotion generally isn't there.
It's World War 2, and we are in Japan. Father is off fighting the Americans, the English, and generally everyone on the good team in the war. So Seita and his little sister Saskimo are at home with mom. A bomb swoops down early on in the film and rips all of mom's skin off. While looking over her lipless, and eyelidless face, Seita and the doctor are very sad. Satsumo however, exclaims that she "Needs to pee" and runs off to a bush. Maybe the script writers wanted to portray childhood innocence. The fact is, no child would piss upon seeing their mothers decimated body.
So without spoiling too much of the film (because it is actually worth watching), Saskila moans a lot, and always at the most inappropriate times. And she is generally what spoils the movie. Partnered with the fact that we already know she is going to die, the viewer is left with an intense feeling of "Shit. This girl is so ungrateful toward her brother. When the fuck is she going to die?!" And then of course, the director, who i can only imagine intended us to have this feeling, gives little Saserello a few near-death-experiences. Just to annoy us. So when she finally does lose her mind and chokes to death on a rock, the viewer can finally enjoy the rest of the film, and find out how Seita becomes a destitute tramp and dies, without Saskello pissing us off. When Seita finally does die, and all is said and done, the film wasn't that unbearable. Grave of the Fireflies gets a 5.5/10!
Cry Baby
I'm not sure where to start with this one. The film itself does better justice than my description, so just watch it.
We have a teenage Johnny Depp, and a teenage Ricki lake as his pregnant sister. Throw in a younger, non-car-insurance-puppet iggy-pop as Johnny's grandfather and a whole host of other ugly, freaky, rule-breaking characters and you get the 'Drapes'. You then have a bunch of non-descript losers; the squares. It's a tongue-in-cheek satire on the whole 'Grease' thing... I would guess, having not seen Grease.
Nobody dies in the beginning of this one, although Hatchet-face can be quite murderous (That's Hatchet-face in the picture above... the one who looks like a hatchett attacked her face).
The story focuses on Cry Baby's (Johnny Depp) ability to shed a single tear at will, and a Square, who is "So tired of being good" being tempted toward the darkside of the Drapes. She joins the drapes and gang-war ensues. I don't want to spoil much, and can't really, because the beauty of the film is greater than the sum of it's parts. It may not have rape, murder, or shit-eating like the other John Waters' films, but the screen play, the acting, and the songs (did i mention it's a musical) are almost faultless.
To top it all off, if you haven't made up your mind yet, at one point in the film, Johnny Depp is crawling round, getting all sweaty, and mysteriously loses his pants. It's good. 9/10
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