It's hard to imagine anybody getting much offended by Pecker, which is part of the film's charm. (Even the MPAA seems to have been charmed, allowing the film an R rating despite a full-screen close-up of a female crotch.) Waters himself has mellowed with age, directing this film as a sentimental valentine to the very notion of trash-as-art that he helped define.

An immensely watchable Edward Furlong is the title character, a young fella with a habit of taking naturalistic snapshots of life in his Baltimore neighborhood. Whether he's shooting his come-hither girlfriend Shelly (Christina Ricci), his whacked-out grandmother with her talking Virgin Mary statue, or just two rats fucking in the alley, Pecker filters his everyday world into an ongoing series of rough black-and-white images.

The film's central joke is that when Pecker is "discovered" by the New York art scene (as embodied in hip cameos, including Cindy Sherman and Patty Hearst), he finds that, though he travels to Manhattan, his sensibilities remain firmly rooted in the soil of Baltimore. Indeed, who would want to live in the purported capital of the world after witnessing Waters' innocent, upbeat depiction of the Baltimore bar scene? The film's final scene is a delirious hoedown, Baltimore-style, that put as goofy a grin on my face as anything I've seen lately.

OK, OK, the movie misses the mark nearly as often as it hits, and maybe I shouldn't be praising Waters for essentially treading water - after all, shouldn't he be able to do this stuff in his sleep? But the new DVD from New Line Home Video is a splendid example of the ways that a movie can actually be improved in its home video incarnation. New Line has given Pecker its usual royal treatment, with a rich, detailed widescreen transfer that reproduces the saturated colors of the theatrical release and yields up every kitschy detail of the costume and set design. Nice work.

But the real selling point of this disc is the commentary from Waters himself. He goes on an absolute tear, rambling non-stop with thoughts on cinema, observations on life in Baltimore and elsewhere, and the occasional aside about the film itself. My favorite moment comes when he finds a reason to take Lars von Trier and his "Dogme 95" cohorts to task for deliberately making movies that look bad, rather than making them that way out of necessity, but I also cackled at his wry observation of the dating behavior of New York "drag kings," which he describes as sexual terrorism.

I'm not sure whether we can take all of his freewheeling comments at face value, but they do put a slightly different spin on the film. He claims, for instance, to harbor a great affection for the New York art scene, which suggests that the film's general tone of mockery of that world is meant partly as a self-deprecating stab at Waters' "other" career as a fine art photographer.

He also points out, with relish, the on-screen appearance of every significant Baltimore location, each prop from his childhood, or just his old, dear friends. It turns out that fashion photographer Greg Gorman, who plays himself, was the last person to see longtime Waters friend and associate Divine alive on the night of his death. In total, Waters' comments give the picture the force of history as well as his own considerable charisma, adding resonance where the film itself is lacking in same.

Finally, the disc includes a short (under 10 minutes) interview with Steve Shacochis, the Baltimore camera-store clerk who was tapped by Waters to take Pecker's photographs for the film. A talented photographer in his own right, Schacochis talks a little bit about technique before admitting that a number of New York magazines became interested in him after seeing the film and plan to publish his work. As life imitates art, it would seem that Shacochis himself has become Pecker. That's one of many bits of trivia making New Line's Pecker a commendable package that's well worth a look.