Saw this movie twice. The first time I thought it was tasteless and boring, except for Bridget Fonda's bathtub scene. I recently saw it again after several years and it didn't seem nearly so bad. Maybe I was able to get past the initial feeling that the writers and the director thought that gags about enemas and the like were themselves laugh-worthy.
It now seems that the folks behind this production were trying something a little more ambitious than "Porky Goes to a Health Club." Maybe it's really meant as a seriocomic Martian's eye view of the current bizarre goings on regarding our own health.
A few years ago we were told to avoid butter (high in calories and cholesterol). So we switched to margarine. Oops. The health police have now thrown up their hands and pointed to the trans-fatty acids ("partially hydrogenated vegetable oil") which knocks your internal cholesterol-producing apparatus into a cocked hat. When I was a kid we were admonished to consume the health foods du jour -- whole milk and liver. (Liver was supposed to supply the body with abundant iron but I really think it was recommended so highly because nobody liked it, therefor it must be good for you.)
Of course that's all history, right? We now know so much better, which is exactly what Dr. Kellog and his colleagues thought in 1895. Each generation believes it stands on the pinnacle of knowledge and science has nothing left to do but fill in a few missing dots. What colossal arrogance.
I suspect that a hundred years from now our current hysteria will seem as deranged to scientists as Kellog's theories seem to us now. If the movie is seen from this perspective, it's a lot funnier than if you look at it simply as a series of jokes about sex and excretion.
The score is enjoyable too. The composer has matched her talents to the visuals with a deftness that's hard to describe. The performances are good, as you might expect from such a cast. But Sir Anthony ("call me Tony") Hopkins is more than merely good. He's been kind of careless in his choice of roles and one might think he's an actor of little range, his métier being the thoughtful, sensitive, quiet, quietly suffering man of reticence. But here he's great. He's got a set of false buck teeth on him that turn his every utterance into a comic statement. Not that he relies entirely on such props. Notice the scene in which he informs Mathew Broderick that his wife, Bridget Fonda, is being regularly masturbated by Dr. Spitsvogel. "It's her womb," he says confidentially, "it's being ma-NIP-ulated!"
And some of the scenes, regardless of any resonance they may have with the present concern with health, are funny in themselves. The scene in which Dr. Kellog's children are all singing Christmas carols in what appears to be a church -- all except one dopey looking kid (who grows up to be Dana Carvey). The kid stands there in the line of singers, sullenly silent, except for the occasional but highly audible rectal zephyr. It seems the perfect response to the health police who have forced Olestra from the store shelves because it causes "anal leakage."
I worked in this scene as an extra in the audience. It was filmed in the attic of one of Wilmington, North Carolina's old mansions and it was a rather spooky experience. The floor was clearly not designed to hold dozens of people and several long tons of cinematic hardware. It was like walking on a trampoline. The director kept pausing and trying to redistribute the weight but it was no use. All I could think of was the scene in Nathaniel West's "Day of the Locus" in which Napolean's army or something crashes through the fake mountain and tumbles to its death. PS: It didn't happen here.
It now seems that the folks behind this production were trying something a little more ambitious than "Porky Goes to a Health Club." Maybe it's really meant as a seriocomic Martian's eye view of the current bizarre goings on regarding our own health.
A few years ago we were told to avoid butter (high in calories and cholesterol). So we switched to margarine. Oops. The health police have now thrown up their hands and pointed to the trans-fatty acids ("partially hydrogenated vegetable oil") which knocks your internal cholesterol-producing apparatus into a cocked hat. When I was a kid we were admonished to consume the health foods du jour -- whole milk and liver. (Liver was supposed to supply the body with abundant iron but I really think it was recommended so highly because nobody liked it, therefor it must be good for you.)
Of course that's all history, right? We now know so much better, which is exactly what Dr. Kellog and his colleagues thought in 1895. Each generation believes it stands on the pinnacle of knowledge and science has nothing left to do but fill in a few missing dots. What colossal arrogance.
I suspect that a hundred years from now our current hysteria will seem as deranged to scientists as Kellog's theories seem to us now. If the movie is seen from this perspective, it's a lot funnier than if you look at it simply as a series of jokes about sex and excretion.
The score is enjoyable too. The composer has matched her talents to the visuals with a deftness that's hard to describe. The performances are good, as you might expect from such a cast. But Sir Anthony ("call me Tony") Hopkins is more than merely good. He's been kind of careless in his choice of roles and one might think he's an actor of little range, his métier being the thoughtful, sensitive, quiet, quietly suffering man of reticence. But here he's great. He's got a set of false buck teeth on him that turn his every utterance into a comic statement. Not that he relies entirely on such props. Notice the scene in which he informs Mathew Broderick that his wife, Bridget Fonda, is being regularly masturbated by Dr. Spitsvogel. "It's her womb," he says confidentially, "it's being ma-NIP-ulated!"
And some of the scenes, regardless of any resonance they may have with the present concern with health, are funny in themselves. The scene in which Dr. Kellog's children are all singing Christmas carols in what appears to be a church -- all except one dopey looking kid (who grows up to be Dana Carvey). The kid stands there in the line of singers, sullenly silent, except for the occasional but highly audible rectal zephyr. It seems the perfect response to the health police who have forced Olestra from the store shelves because it causes "anal leakage."
I worked in this scene as an extra in the audience. It was filmed in the attic of one of Wilmington, North Carolina's old mansions and it was a rather spooky experience. The floor was clearly not designed to hold dozens of people and several long tons of cinematic hardware. It was like walking on a trampoline. The director kept pausing and trying to redistribute the weight but it was no use. All I could think of was the scene in Nathaniel West's "Day of the Locus" in which Napolean's army or something crashes through the fake mountain and tumbles to its death. PS: It didn't happen here.