Private Parts Reviews

Will Howard Stern fans like this canny exercise in auto-hagiography? Suffice it to say that the obvious rhetorical retorts -- unfit for family consumption -- don't even begin to approach the stratosphere of vulgarity Stern inhabits, and those who love him wouldn't have him any other way. And as to the skeptical, the shock-jock re-creates the flavor of his notoriously profane radio patter, while softening it sufficiently that you just about have to side with him against the bluestocking producer he dubs "Pig Vomit." C'mon -- churls just want to have fun. Capably directed by Betty Thomas, this freewheeling pseudodocumentary tribute to Stern's juvenile antics paints the anarchic radio idol as Everyschmo made good. As Stern himself never fails to point out in his running voice-over, he's geeky, he's funny-looking, he's underendowed, he showed them all and still has the decency to laugh at himself. What a guy. Sure, he's a potty-mouthed blowhard on the air, spewing homophobic, racist, sexist and just about very other -ist bile in every direction. But he's just fooling with the lesbian-dating and the dirty words and the simulated sex and the praying to God to send a hit man from Palermo to kill Mr. Pig Vomit. In real life he's a sweetheart, and gosh darn it if his hugely pregnant wife isn't the most beautiful woman in the whole world. Much more beautiful than the buck-nekkid, silicon-enhanced, bottle-blonde bimbo giving him a massage in the on-air booth. Remember, he's just joshing. You have to hand it to the guy: He may be a buffoon, but he's no fool.