Desperately Seeking a Point
200 Cigarettes
A clumsy script gets better actors than it deserves.
With Ben Affleck, Martha Plimpton, Christina Ricci, Paul Rudd, Courtney Love
Written by Shana Larsen
Directed by Risa Bramon Garcia
MOST OF THE TWO DOZEN characters in 200 Cigarettes -- whose lives intertwine on New Year's Eve, 1981, in the East Village of Manhattan -- all have more or less one goal in mind: They want to get laid, although a few of them call it "falling in love," a romantic notion apparently left over from the more sentimental '70s.
Directed by Risa Bramon Garcia and written by Shana Larsen, both big-screen first-timers, 200 Cigarettes recalls early '80s Susan Seidelman (remember Smithereens or Desperately Seeking Susan?) by way of much better one-long-night-in-Manhattan movies like Martin Scorsese's After Hours. It's filled with pretty and occasionally interesting people whom you wouldn't mind seeing have sex with each other, and even badly filmed New York locations like the ones we get here are good for a short flight of urban romantic fancy.
But Garcia is a clumsy director who never gives her movie a rhythm or a tone, and Larsen's script never even comes close to anything resembling insight. This is a movie about the '80s Me Generation but for its '90s cultural offspring -- once commonly known as Generation X, a moniker that's now almost obsolete. And despite the presence of many hot young stars doing their hip low-budget thing, 200 Cigarettes is indie filmmaking at its blandest and most unimaginative.
The story opens in the back of a cab driven by the movie's only black character (David Chappelle), a smooth-talking love doctor who has a miniature disco ball hanging from his rearview mirror. His passengers at the start of the evening are Kevin (Paul Rudd in the Ben Stiller role), an adorable, pouty, black-clad nihilist with right-angle sideburns, and his friend of five years, Lucy (Courtney Love in the Sandra Bernhard role), a free-spirited, self-professed slut who's trying to help Kevin have some fun and get over his day-old breakup with his girlfriend (Janeane Garofalo in the Janeane Garofalo role).
After some bitter banter between Kevin and Lucy in the back seat of the cab, we cut to the fabulous loft apartment of Monica (Martha Plimpton), who's dressed in a pale green sleeveless taffeta party dress and fingerless scarlet fishnet gloves that go up to her elbows. She's the hostess with the mostest this New Year's Eve, and she's throwing a party that means life and death to her. So as the hours tick away and nobody shows up, you need to remember that it's her party and she'll cry if she wants to.
Meanwhile, all over lower Manhattan, her would-be guests have become slaves of New York, making a mess of their lives and their outfits.
Jack (Jay Mohr) is an actor who can't understand why every woman he takes to bed falls in love with him by morning. His date (Kate Hudson) reveals that their lovemaking the night before was her first time and she's in love with him. At first she looks pretty in pink, but before long she ends up with a big wad of dog shit on her back.
In a neighborhood bar, a Tom Cruise wannabe bartender (Ben Affleck) drops bottles and pickup lines, all of them shattering on the floor. Two dolled-up Long Island high school girls (Christina Ricci, Gaby Hoffman) begin to realize they're out of their league in the city on their way to Monica's party, especially when a couple of leathered-up punk rockers (Casey Affleck, Guillermo Diaz) try to pick them up.
And Monica, who eventually misses the opportunity to meet her idol, Elvis Costello (as himself), ends up going over old relationship business with her Scottish ex-boyfriend (Brian McCardie), who just got dumped by his new girlfriend because he's a thoroughly incompetent lover -- which a reluctant and crestfallen Monica eventually confirms.
Somewhere in all this is a brisk slice of life and character study about a bunch of young early-'80s types who can't quite figure out who they want to be, let alone who they really are. But Garcia doesn't have the finesse to pull it off, and Larsen lapses into romantic clichés the moment anyone begins to talk about anything real. The movie bumps along from place to place gracelessly -- although to be fair, Garcia's flat camera direction may have something to do with her tiny indie budget. Still, if you look at a low-budget movie like Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco, you see what a skillful director can do with limited resources and a far less talented cast.
So in 200 Cigarettes, we're left with the naked (but not naked enough) charms of the actors, a few of whom manage to hold your attention when Garcia accidentally lets them. Ben Affleck plays dumb better than any smart young actor around. Rudd, who's too damned good-looking, is the consummate romantic fool. Plimpton, a few pounds heavier than usual and looking very healthy, does some swift comic turns that begins to reveal another side of her intriguing personality.
Best of all, who would have guessed that Courtney Love, the Evil Queen of pop music, would revivify her image and achieve her own little bit of cinematic nirvana? With her wide plump lips, her toothy enticing smile, and her inquisitive, challenging, seductive face, she's oddly fascinating and satisfying to watch.