Sorry, not funny
I love Divine and John Waters, but this film went too far. I can't deal with rape, animal abuse, or coprophagous acts on the screen.

Rebecca Kyle, August 2008

Poor Chicken
I love John Waters, but I REALLY didn't appreciate the chicken scene. Animal cruelty isn't art in my opinion.

An Excercise in Extremely Poor Taste. Face Down Pushups, In Fact.
Another online source observes that this movie is involved with "taking on and demolishing just about every known middle-class value. . ." It certainly takes them on, but does little to offer anything substantive in exchange. This movie was lauded in a recent documentary I watched, so I put it in my Netflix queue. The movie sold itself under the tagline, "An exercise in poor taste." That turned out to be a very restrained characterization.

I'd have given it one star were it not for the occasional inanely humorous moments. Divine is certainly a larger than life personality. I was also interested in the performance of the late Cookie Mueller who was featured in a Nan Goldin book I had a chance to peruse several months ago. And, what the hell, it is - for whatever it's worth - a cult classic, one of those "places" movie buffs probably ought to go just to say they did. This is the backside of the silver screen, the prolapsed rectum of famous films.

And should you find the tedious storyline, awful camera work, threesome with a chicken, the famous "singing [butt]hole and the incestuous fellatio pushing you away from the screen, don't give up. The last moments are the best. I never knew it could be so hard to watch Divine eat real dog feces. This movie is scatologically orgiastic.

the funniest scene in the movies
I rented this a while back after reading about for years and it is a mind-blowing movie. All the other reviewers here have said all that can be said,both pro and con,by now;but I want to say that the scene of Divine
parading down the sidewalk to the tune "The Girl Can't Help It" for me ranks in the top ten (and may be #1) as the funniest movie scene ever.
I laughed 'til I cried the first time I saw it.
I love John Waters' movies and especially his choice of songs-there's nothing better than that old rock'n'roll.

It is what it is
I'll just tell you straight forward, this isn't an amazing movie. It's not even a good movie. It doesn't try to be either of those. What it IS, is a movie with unsimulated oral sex between a mother and son (the characters, not in real life as plenty of the rest of this movie is), an obese woman constantly covered in eggs, a sex scene with a live chicken, and of course, a fat transvestite chewing on actual dog poo. if you don't like one or all of those things, I suggest not watching this movie. What's the point of angering yourself? If you don't mind seeing any of that stuff in a movie (it didn't bother me), then you'll probably see the movie for what it was intended to be, offensively and darkly funny.