BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS (1999) ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Alan Rudolph
Bruce Willis, Nick Nolte, Albert Finney,
Glenne Headly, Barbara Hershey, Lukas Haas
If Kurt Vonnegut's books make kind of straggly movies, it because they're kind of straggly books. They're a kick to read - playful, cynical, wise and weird, filled with eccentric characters and a prevailing sense of bemused despair - but there isn't always much holding them together. That's sort of the way it is with Alan Rudolph's screen version of Vonnegut's 1973 novel "Breakfast of Champions". The eccentrics traipsing through and crossing paths include a suicidal auto dealer, his devoted receptionist, his cross-dressing sales manager, his narcotized wife and his oddball son. Hitchhiking toward them is Vonnegut's bitter, cantankerous alter ego, Kilgore Trout, a barely published science fiction writer whose work has appeared mainly in porno magazines. As expected, you don't get a real tight story - it's all kind of a mess - but you do get a little magic, a lot of strangeness and a dash of Vonnegut's comically skewed sensibility, plus Bruce Willis in a bad toupee, Barbara Hershey in yellow rubber boots, Glenne Headly in white lingerie, Nick Nolte in red lingerie, Lukas Haas in bunny slippers and Albert Finney munching the scenery as Kilgore Trout. Nolte, who once made a movie called "I'll Do Anything", really proves it here.
Albert Finney
(1936-2019)
