| Comedy | MPAA:R |
I worked second shift - 3:30 to midnite, more or less (usually more), and since I worked out of town, I didn't get home until after 1 in the morning. There isn't a whole lot on tv at that hour (where do you think Bruce Springsteen came up with the idea for a song about 57 channels with nothing on?). You can watch has-been actors and mediocre soap stars telling worn out pop singers how thier Pyschic reader friends are predicting great things for them (I find the one with Audrey Meadows particularly amusing (for those of you who haven't left your computers for a while - Ms. Meadows is dead, something I'm sure her psychic reader failed to tell her about)). If not those (or the guy shooting laser beams at peoples cars) then it's various people telling you that thier newest exercise gizmo or diet plan will change your life. Have you seen some of these gizmos? Half of them look dangerous, the other half look like jokes. But none of them look as bad as some of the things you'll see in The Road to Wellville.
This film is (sort of) based on Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, and his sanitorium in Battle Creek Michigan. Kellogg (Anthony Hopkins) invented the Corn Flake (though it was another Kellogg who formed the cereal company that rules Battle Creek), and ran a health resort based on his rather strange beliefs in health. Will (Matthew Broderick) and Eleanor (Bridget Fonda) are going to Wellville in order to cure Will's stomach problems. His problems (we find later) are caused by his wife's attempt to cure his alchoholism (she turned him into an opium junkie). On the train they meet Charles Ossining (John Cusack), who is hoping to go into the corn flake business himself. They arrive, Charles to meet his business partner, Will & Eleanor to meet the good Dr. Kellogg, who looks at Will and decides the first thing he needs is an enema. Will (who only wants to get better so he can have sex with his wife again) is so frustrated, he keeps halucinating about nude women - first his nurse (Traci Lind), and then the poor girl across the hall, Ida Muntz (Laura Flynn Boyle, made up to look truly ghastly). Unfortunately for Will, Dr Kellogg has ruled that sex - and the loss of bodily fluid that goes with it - is the big killer of mankind. He doesn't have sex, choosing to adopt children, instead of risking his health to have them the old fashioned way. We meet one of these adopted children, George (Dana Carvey), who grew up to be quite repulsive. He's met up with Charles and his partner (Michael Lerner), and they decide to profit on George's name. They try to make cornflakes, but the resulting concoction is so vile, that pigs won't even eat it. They finally resort to stealing Kellogg's cornflakes, putting it in thier boxes and selling it as thier own. Charles' partner eventually flies the coop, leaving him to pay the bills, and take the fall, when thier little scheme falls apart and becomes public. While this is happening, Will - denied the affection he so desires from his wife, has taken to dallying with Ida - until she dies. He finds this out, after a particularly nasty accident in the electric Sitz bath room, and before finding Dr. Kelloggs assistant (Roy Brocksmith) dead on the front lawn. Will goes into town, eats lots of forbidden red meat, and gets roaringly drunk. His wife has befriended a rather free spirited woman (Camryn Manheim) who introduces her to Dr. Lionel Badger (Colm Meaney) a health nut who thinks in a more, shall we say uninhibited way. Eleanor also get introduced to a massage therapist, Dr. Spitzvogel (Norbert Weisser) who specializes in (to use Dr. Kelloggs own words) massaging wombs. This all comes to a head when Will discovers Dr. Badger watching the massage therapist perform his work on Eleanor and her friend out in the woods. He bursts in on them, whacking the therapist on his bare backside with a stick, and drags his wife off. They have a brief verbal exchange, then get down to the business of having great sex. George burns down the sanitorium, but manages to get through to his father. Charles gets caught by the cops, but escapes in the confusion of the fire. Will and Eleanor return home, have four girls, and live happily ever after. Charles comes up with a successful business selling a beverage made from sugar water and the extract of coca leaves. And Dr. Kellogg, while trying to prove how healthy he is, drops dead diving into a lake.
This film didn't do so hot in theaters, but then again Broderick isn't quite the draw he used to be when he was in Ferris Buehler (although he did manage to grow chest hair since then). Hopkins was all but unrecognizable, what with the funky glasses, funky beard, and funky teeth (in the flash back scenes with him and George as a child, he looks like a different actor). Boyle, who was all perkiness in Waynes World, and sensual temptress in The Temp, looked like death warmed over (but then again, that's what she was, so I guess that would be appropriate). There was entirely too many references to enemas, fecal matter, and other things best left in the bathroom. The judgement of Kelloggs methods were left to the five deaths in the film: The assistant driven to death by his unobservant boss, the attendant and guest killed by the faulty health inducing device, Ida Muntz is treated for quack illnesses with quack remedies, so her genuine illness remains undiagnosed and untreated, and finally Kellogg - the epitome of health, who just drops dead, despite his lifestyle. In the book, Kellogg drowns his son in the vat -- rather than rescuing him, and Ida Muntz (who never has sex with Will) dies of Radiation poisoning after Kellogg has her breathing Radium as a treatment. Some of the things they used to do to be healthy are almost as funny as watching Suzanne Somers using her Thighmaster.