|
| Foocha! is a non-profit Web site. We do it for kicks, not for cash. If you're interested in writing for the site, click here |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
| Movies,
Graham Bower,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F1
|
|
| |
| |
|
It’s funny how two different people can take two completely different messages out of the same book.
The movie version of Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions" was apparently a labour of love for it’s star, Bruce Willis, a confessed Kurt Vonnnegut fan. Well I, also, am a Vonnegut fan, and yet there was nothing of what I love about Vonnegut’s work in this movie.
With a single-minded determination, Vonnegut reveals a deep-seated compassion for humanity, whilst also exhibiting a deeper mistrust of human behaviour.
Breakfast of Champions explores none of this uneasy balance, choosing instead to concentrate on the nonsensical whimsy of the book. Alan Rudolph bizarrely tries to make a story out of Vonnegut's wandering prose. Everyone in the movie is either deranged, or heading that way, and the audience is encourage to laugh at how ridiculous it all is. In short, Rudolph has transformed Champions into lightweight, slapstick farce.
Bruce Willis walks through the whole movie with a perplexed smile on his face, perhaps trying to understand how Rudolph's turgid screenplay is supposed to relate to the book. The audience is given no explanation of the cause or nature of Dwayne Hoover’s madness, and since everyone else in the movie appears equally mad, anyone unfamiliar with the original novel will doubtless not consider it significant. It’s strange that nothing is made Albert Finney’s Kilgore Trout. The failed Science Fiction writer who is a recurring character in Vonnegut’s work is extremely unsympathetic, which is a shame, considering he seems to represent Vonnegut’s alter-ego, and a dry, objective if a little jaded perspective on the proceedings. Some kind of explanation for the events of the movie would be a help as it lurches from one bizarre, unexplained event to the next.
It's one of the most disappointing movies I've seen this year.
UK rating:
15
US rating:
R
Alan Rudolph1999, US
Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte, Barbara Hershey, Glenne Headly
Top Home |
|
|
|
|
