Now the coca cola kid review thanks roobs!
What do you get when you take Dusan Makavejev and Eric Roberts out of the comfort zone of a context in which they work well, and amplify all their deficiencies? You get one of the worst films ever made on a sufficient budget. If there is a hell, this film is on loop.
Bill Kerr, Tim Finn and a rich premise are the only glimmers of hope in resuscitating this shambolic mess, which is drenched in some of the worst American-Australian stereotyping kitsch you have ever ever seen. I wasn't just cringing at times during this film, I was in physical pain, it was that downright offensive. Other than the odd shot here or there, It's just really poorly made on multiple levels.
Apparently this was shown in competition at Cannes (flol) and received a fairly okay reception, although we might be able to chalk that up to France's notoriously paranoid relationship with Coca Cola as the forefront symbol of soft power hegemonic influence.
For all promising young actors out there, let this be a reminder that you are only as good as your last performance. An absolute career killer for Eric Roberts in every way, he never really recovered from this. He has made many bad choices in his career, but this is his most catastrophic. Whilst he actually received an Oscar nomination in 1985 thanks to his immediately subsequent film release, and arguably his finest film yet (
Runaway Train), the failure of this and the subsequent
Nobody's Fool, along with off-screen problems, effectively resulted in him walking the plank.
Despite a potentially intelligent premise, this film is utterly moronic, although I suspect a lot of this stems from the choice of director for this particular project. The tale of the film production, particularly the anecdotes of the rather sporting Scacchi, are infinitely more interesting than the film itself. It's an embarrassing final product, a low light for practically all involved. As a film production it was certainly worth giving a go, it held promise, but the mixture of ingredients here is a hideously vile concoction.