Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea
Closed CaptioningJeff Springer & Chris Metzler
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Plot Summary
Fabulously offbeat and refreshingly upbeat, this lovable film gets friendly with the natives of the Salton Sea an inland ocean of massive fish kills, rotting resorts, and 120 degree nights located just minutes from urban Southern California. This award-winning film from directors Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer details the rise and fall of the Salton Sea, from its heyday as the "California Riviera" where boaters and Beach Boys mingled in paradise to its present state of decaying, forgotten ecological disaster. From wonderland to wasteland, PLAGUES & PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA captures a place far more interesting than the shopping malls and parking lots of suburban America, a wacky world where a beer-swilling Hungarian Revolutionary, a geriatric nudist, and a religious zealot building a monument to God all find solace and community. Crisply and hilariously narrated by oddball auteur John Waters, and featuring music by desert lounge rockers Friends of Deans Martinez, PLAGUES & PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA melds high camp with stark realism, offering both a sobering message about the consequences of tampering with nature and a heart-warming tale of individualism.
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Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews
TOMATOMETER
96%- Reviews Counted: 47
- Fresh: 45
- Rotten: 2
- Average Rating: 7.4/10
Top Critics' Reviews
Fresh: An often-fascinating document of change -- incremental as evaporation, or catastrophic as flooding.
Fresh: California dreaming meets good old American eccentricity and ecological emergency in the story of the Salton Sea.
Fresh: If it's not likely to send you scurrying off to the place on your next vacation, it's still a fascinating, nutty story, a kind of Chinatown gone wrong (or gone more wrong ).
Fresh: Although the lake may be slowly dying, it is still beloved by a motley bunch of eccentrics who are profiled in the highly entertaining documentary Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea.
Customer Reviews
Fun and interesting Doc.
The documentary begins by giving a short history of the Salton Sea (how the sea came into being, why it is still here, etcetera). Then the story moves into telling the current state of the sea and the problems it is facing through interviews with the locals.
Plagues and Pleasures has been a favorite documentary of mine for several years. I go back to it again and again due to its playful nostalgic tone and the lovable (and sometimes eccentric) cast of locals. If you like quirky then this is the documentary for you! If you don't, give it try anyway it will brighten your day.
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Did not like the fact that it took forever to download the movie!! The movie was good but the download was horrible!
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