September
17, 1999 | Stunned disbelief is the only rational response to Breakfast
of Champions, a ghastly misfire that brings out the self-indulgent
worst in everyone involved. The scenario, based on a cult-fave novel
written by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. in the 1970s, has been updated to unfold
in a contemporary Middle American milieu. But the time-warping doesn't
help: At its frequent worst, the movie reeks of the anything-goes sophomoric
social satire that prevailed in the lesser counterculture comedies of
20 and 30 years ago.
Bruce
Willis makes an admirable but ill-advised effort to demonstrate his
versatility in the lead role of Dwayne Hoover, the kind of flamboyant
car dealer who achieves local superstardom by appearing in his own cheesy
commercials. Dwayne is imploding under the pressure of discontent and
self-doubt, and losing his tenuous grip on what passes for sanity in
Midland City. And yet, for all his suicidal tendencies and hallucinatory
fantasies, he is a paragon of mental normalcy compared to most of the
folks around him.
Celia
(Barbara Hershey), Dwayne's wife, is a pill-popping zombie who blisses
out on the feel-good fantasies offered in television ads - yes, even
those featuring her husband - while Bunny (Lukas Haas), their son, is
a pompadoured lounge singer who croons in a hotel bar. Harry Le Sabre
(Nick Nolte), Dwayne's best friend and employee, lives in constant dread
of being discovered as a transvestite. Francine (Glenne Headly), Dwayne's
indefatigably chipper secretary, eagerly agrees to lunchtime assignations
with her boss - in the hope that he will finance her dream project,
a fast-food chicken outlet.
And
then there's Wayne Hoobler (Omar Epps), just out of prison and maniacally
obsessed with working for, or simply being near, his kinda-sorta namesake.
Call him a benign stalker, and you won't be far off the mark.
With
so many oddballs in Dwayne's orbit, it is perfectly understandable that
he feels the need to search elsewhere for sagacious advice about the
meaning of life. Kilgore Trout (Albert Finney), a cranky sci-fi writer
who's invited to appear at Midland City's first annual arts festival,
provides a couple of fortune-cookie aphorisms to soothe Dwayne's troubled
spirit. That may not be much, but - mercifully, thankfully - it's enough
to end the movie.
Breakfast
of Champions was written and directed by Alan Rudolph, whose very
best films (Choose Me, Trouble in Mind, Afterglow) are gracefully
melancholy romantic fantasias. But there is nothing graceful about this
ham-handed, lead-footed disaster. The actors are encouraged to go way
over the top, and then a bit higher, while Rudolph tightly focuses on
each twitchy, eye-popping excess. At one point, Nolte - who fared much
better in another Vonnegut adaptation, Mother Night - interrupts
his ravenous scenery chewing to lean toward the camera and noisily snort
from a nasal sprayer. It's a toss-up as to which is more embarrassing:
Nolte's desperate mugging, or Rudolph's encouragement of such behavior.
To
say anything more about this debacle would be needlessly unkind.