YMMV / Serial Mom

• Cult Classic: It is a John Waters movie.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Ms. Jenson, who returns movies to the video store without rewinding them, is seen returning Ghost Dad. See, back in the 90s, being a Bill Cosby fan characterized you as wholesome - not anymore, after all his sexual assault accusations in 2015. Then again, this may retroactively validate the point Chip was making that people who watch nothing but inoffensive films are very twisted, the wholesomeness being hollow.
• He's Just Hiding: Juror #8 could have only been unconscious after being hit twice with a telephone receiver.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The movie shows clips of the Joan Crawford film Straight-Jacket. John Waters would later play the director William Castle in Feud, at a screening of Straight-Jacket, no less.
  • John Waters and Justin Whalin, who both worked on this movie, also had acted in the Child's Play films (Waters would later play the Slimeball paparazzi photographer Pete Peters in Seed of Chucky, while Whalin had played the teenaged Andy Barclay in Child's Play 3). Ironically, both installments Waters and Whalin were a part of were low points for the franchise.
  • Matthew Lillard plays a horror-obsessed video store clerk two years before bullying such a character in Scream.
• Retroactive Recognition: Rosemary is played by Mary Jo Catlett, the voice of Mrs. Puff.

• Spiritual Successor: John Waters said that Serial Mom is basically a theoretical "part two" of Female Trouble.
• Squick: Beverly and Eugene moan loudly while having sex, much to the disgust of their children, who can hear everything.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Roger Ebert wasn't too keen on the film, mostly because he found Kathleen Turner's portrayal of Beverly to be this trope.
  Watch "Serial Mom" closely, however, and you'll realize that something is miscalculated at a fundamental level. Turner's character is helpless and unwitting in a way that makes us feel almost sorry for her - and that undermines the humor. She isn't funny crazy, she's sick crazy. The movie shows her triggered by passing remarks (a garbage man says "somebody ought to kill" a neighbor woman who refuses to recycle). She gets a weird light in her eyes that I guess we're supposed to laugh at, but, gee, it's kind of pathetic the way she goes into murderous action.
• The Woobie:
  • Poor Dottie is tortured with obscene phone calls (even after changing her number twice) and is framed for breaking a mutual friend's prized possession just because she unknowingly took a parking spot Beverly wanted.
  • Eugene is a decent Family Man who has to deal with his wife murdering many of their acquaintances and the knowledge that she'll either go free when she's guilty or be sentenced to death.

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