I haven't heard very much about this film since the shooting stage, and would love to hear some other opinions on the movie. This fella... well he didn't dig the movie much at all, and well.... We'll just have to see what others think. The book wasn't for everyone, and the film will probably be for even less, well here's the review...
Bruce Willis' adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel, "Breakfast of Champions" is out in theaters in Germany, after its premiere at last month's Berlin Film Festival. At the premiere party, Willis stripped down to his white tank top and DJ'd for the crowd, while co-star Nick Nolte downed Jagermeister shots - they both ended up roaring drunk.
That's probably the last celebrating they'll ever do for this turkey. When it comes over to the States, this movie will either go straight to video or end up getting slow roasted by the critics. Willis has another "Hudson Hawk" on his hands, a tired, absurdly unfunny film that is painful to watch.
In the theater in Hamburg, where I saw it a week and a half ago, the other eight people in the audience got up halfway through and walked out, leaving my poor cousin and I to endure the miserable rest.
The fact is that, ever since "Moonlighting" Willis just can't do comedy - witness "Hudson Hawk"s over-the-top melodrama and buffoonery. Well, "Breakfast of Champions" is almost as terrible. Although it starts off promising with a panicked Willis, in suit and tie, glasses fogging up, trying to stick a .44 down his throat, before his screaming wife (Barbara Hershey must already be regretting she ever signed up for this movie - not a way to rescucitate a dying career) interrupts him with her kvetching. Willis plays a used car dealer, Dwayne Hoover, whose TV commercials flash all over the airwaves of his small Midwestern town and his face takes up most of the billboards on every road in the area.
He's desperate for the truth, a real life, honesty - a world away from his cheap salesman routine, where he's having sex with his mistress, his wife drools in front of the TV 24 hours a day, and his effeminate son (Lukas Haas) calls himself Bunny and plays synthesizer at the local hotel's cocktail lounge.
Everyone's a dreamer - from Willis to his chief salesman Nick Nolte, who harbors fantasies of escaping to Hawaii with his (real-life) wife, Vicki Lewis. Then there's Omar Epps, who plays a paroled convict, whose only dream in life is to go work for Dwayne Hoover. And even Kilgore Trout (Albert Finney), Vonnegut's elusive mythic figure, an obscure writer from outside New York, whose crazed science fiction only gets published in porno magazines, is always dreaming of a Hawaii-like landscape full of lush mountains and playing children.
They all tumble together in this mess of a film, the only thread that connects the story is Trout's journey to an artists convention in Hoover's town, and scenes from his cross-country voyage mix with Willis' increasing nervous breakdown. Eventually, Willis gets convinced that Trout will be his salvation, will bring wisdom and truth to his life, and he just anxiously awaits his arrival. Of course, Willis goes nuts when Trouts finally arrives, destroying the cocktail lounge, smacking his son, and getting hauled away by the cops in a squad car.
Willis gets that paranoid look in his eyes when he' s trying to convey quiet desperation that just makes a viewer scream, "I don't care!" The only half-interesting bit in the movie is to see Nick Nolte dressed in drag, with fishnet stockings and a garter belt under his straighlaced suit. He looks pretty ridiculous and it makes for some good chuckles except even this joke gets worn down through overuse.
The movie is an embarassment, trying to work as some satirical fantasy and it just doesn't work. Either Vonnegut's work just can't be translated to film or it needs to be done on a different level and not so literally.
