200 Cigarettes (1999) * *

Directed by: Risa Bramon-Garcia

Starring:  Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jay Mohr, Christina Ricci, Courtney Love, Martha Plimpton, Paul Rudd


Set on New Year's Eve 1981, 200 Cigarettes is an ensemble comedy involving revolving storylines that come together at a party in which its host (Plimpton) is fearful no one will attend.    Funny thing is, people attend, but what happened there is told in narration and shown in Polaroid snapshots.    200 Cigarettes is more concerned with the events leading up to the party.    Most of what happens in trivial romantic comedy stuff with lots of dialogue, although not much of substance actually being said.    There isn't anything catchy about the film.   I can't remember a line of dialogue that stood out.   It's not awful, but as Dom Deluise said in History Of The World Part I, "Nice, not THRILLING, but nice."   Yes, I quoted History Of The World Part I.

The film is set in 1981, but there is really no reason for this except to have cool 1980's songs on the soundtrack.   I'm a big fan of Roxy Music's "More Than This" by the way, so that's always good to hear.   But the film could've easily been set on New Year's Eve 2011.   Actually, they made that film too.   It was called New Year's Eve, which like this film is innocuous and fleeting.

The performances here are mostly okay, although I could've done without all of Kate Hudson's pratfalls.  And believe me there is a lot of them.    Why her character is presented as such a klutz is beyond me, but she is certainly a pretty thing.   Christina Ricci really lays on the New Yawk accent too while no one else does.   Why this is I don't know either.    Dave Chappelle is the cab driver who at one point or another carries all of the film's characters in his cab acts as a narrator of sorts.   Naturally, he has a scene in which he smokes weed.    His film contracts must state that he gets at least one of these per film.

I'm guessing the film is called 200 Cigarettes because mostly all of the characters smoke a lot and maybe that is the total number of cigarettes smoked in the film.   I didn't count and I wasn't quite that bored that I even wanted to.   Elvis Costello appears in the film inexplicably and as far as I know, he didn't smoke.  At least he knows that stuff is bad for you.