Parents' Guide to Please Baby Please

This film isn't disappointing, and it has entertaining points, but it's trying too hard to become an instant camp classic. As Susan Montag writes in her essay Notes on "Camp", "To talk about Camp is therefore to betray it." And Please Baby Please betrays the nature of camp by asserting itself as such. The movie's biggest sin is that it isn't rooted in earnestness, which is one of the hallmarks of pure camp. From mainstream camp films like Death Becomes Her, the 1990s Addams Family movies, The Birdcage, Little Shop of Horrors, and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar to campy older Hollywood films like Some Like It Hot, Mame, and What a Way to Go! to cult classics like John Waters and RuPaul's whole filmographies, truly campy movies have a sense of fun and naivete.

To quote Montag again, "One must distinguish between naive and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always naive. Camp which knows itself to be Camp ... is usually less satisfying." Please Baby Please knows itself to be Camp all too well, which takes the fun and discovery out of the film. There are some interesting points of set design and direction -- such as having the colors of cobalt and ultramarine blue signify lust and sexual discovery -- but it's unclear why that color was chosen. And Teddy is cleverly dressed like the male pinups drawn by Tom of Finland, but overall, the film seems too obsessed with the artifice of camp and with its art school sensibilities, which get in the way of the story the film wants to tell. Fans of arthouse films may still find hidden gems in Please Baby Please, but overall the story needed more polish.