THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Broderick, Bridget Fonda, John Cusack, Michael Lerner, Dana Carvey. Screenplay/Director: Alan Parker.
Sir Anthony Hopkins doing a scene with Dana Carvey. If you can capture that image in your mind, you will know everything you really need to know about why THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE just doesn't quite work. On the one hand, the sumptuous production is filled with delightful period detail; on the other hand, there isn't all that much going on that one couldn't find in your typical bad, overlong "Saturday Night Live" sketch. Somewhere in THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE is a satire of health fads, but it's buried beneath costumes and scatological humor. The result is basically a Merchant Ivory production of a "Benny Hill" episode.
THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE is set in turn-of-the-century Battle Creek, Michigan, where corn flake entrepreneur and health guru John Harvey Kellogg (Anthony Hopkins) has established a high-class sanitarium for wealthy patrons. Among those who journey to Battle Creek to avail themselves of the "san's" regimen of meatless diet and frequent enemas are Will (Matthew Broderick) and Eleanor Lightbody (Bridget Fonda), a couple whose problems are more personal than medical. While separated due to the strict anti-sex rules, both Will and Eleanor find their desires piqued elsewhere. Meanwhile, a young fortune seeker (John Cusack) and his shady parnter (Michael Lerner) attempt to cash in on the health craze with their own corn flake.
THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE opens promisingly enough, with a funny scene of a group of women undergoing "laugh therapy." It's delightfully silly, but it isn't long before it becomes clear that such silliness is about all there is to THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE. It's a classic one-joke film, all based on the outrageous Rube Goldberg health contraptions to which the guests at the sanitarium are subjected.
Actually, it may be more accurate to think of THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE's one joke in broader terms, as the tittering variations on an R-rated farce. At one time or another, all of the following are used as punch lines: vomit, flatulence, sex, bare breasts, masturbation, erections, enemas, urine and feces. I'm hard pressed to come up with anything they might have missed. It's not that none of the gags are amusing; some of them are. But over two hours of such material truly tests one's patience.
That running time seems particularly long because screenwriter and director Alan Parker lets his narrative wander all over the place. The sub-plot featuring Cusack and Lerner as a couple of hucksters attempting to hitch their wagon to Kellogg's estranged son George (Carvey) seems intended as a counterpoint to the sanitarium, simply taking advantage of health obsession on a different scale. But there isn't anything interesting going on in that sub-plot, except watching Cusack take a lot longer than it takes us to figure out that his partner is a fraud. Then there is a bizarre series of flashbacks showing Kellogg dealing with the extremely odd behavior of a 10-year-old George. While they may be meant to humanize Kellogg, they're really just one more case of where judicious editing might have benefited the film.
As with almost everything in THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE, the acting is almost universally too broad, probably as an attempt to disguise the fact that there may not be a single genuinely interesting character in the bunch. Hopkins' Kellogg is a buck-toothed cartoon, a health evangelist selling salvation via the bowels, but he's never a real person. Matthew Broderick is good in a rare adult role, but he's stuck with every actor's bugaboo, the drunk scene, as is Cusack. And Carvey, naturally, mugs shamelessly. Only John Neville and Camryn Manheim, as a pair of older patrons who befriend Will and Eleanor respectively, bring any kind of human warmth to their roles. They are all surrounded by marvelous sets, and are well-photographed by Peter Biziou, but Parker hasn't given them any clear sense of exactly why they are making this movie. For a story that's supposed to be a satire, THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE ends up mostly as a parody of itself.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 enemas: 4.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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