New comedy goes up in smoke

Ben Affleck. Casey Affleck. Janeane Garofalo. Courtney Love. Jay Mohr. Christina Ricci. Paul Rudd.

This, boys and girls, is just a sampling of the illustrious cast of "200 Cigarettes," an ensemble film about one wild and crazy night (heard this one before?) that just happens to be New Year's Eve 1981 in New York's already wild and crazy East Village. These are actors in the truest sense of the word, people we've seen doing their job better than half of Hollywood. They can be comical or dramatic, flamboyant or understated.

They are none of those things, however, in "200 Cigarettes," a poor attempt at filmmaking that is nothing more than a good cast gone wrong. It's a colossal piece of repellantly unfunny garbage, and it's painful to think of the great movie that this bunch of creative types could have made together if only they'd realized their mistake before it was too late and the camera was rolling.

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures Dave Chapelle lends pot to Angie Featherstone.

The only possible explanation for this is that the prospect of working with each other was so enticing (or that MTV offered so much money to pull together a high-profile, sure-to-bring-in-the-target-demographic audience that they couldn't refuse) that it blinded them to the terrible script they were working from. Call it a form of Hollywood denial, call it greed, call it whatever you want. Just don't call it a quality decision.

The main idea behind "200 Cigarettes" is that everyone is whiling away the evening waiting for the hour to be fashionably late enough that it's cool to show up at Monica's (Martha Plimpton) party, the bulk of the guest list being made up of her ex-boyfriends. This is one of those too-many-cast-members-to-count movies where we bounce back and forth between each pair or trio of characters who will ultimately all end up at the same location. The gimmick this time out is that they all, at some point during the night, ride in the nameless disco cabbie's (Dave Chappelle) taxi cab and he offers them advice or a hit off of his joint.

We start out with Kevin (Rudd) and Lucy (Love). Kevin is in mourning because it is his birthday and he has just broken up with his girlfriend, Ellie (Garofalo). This opens the door for he and Lucy to have many boring, repetitive conversations about moping on New Year's and sex with each other and other people. Come to think of it, there aren't really any non-boring or non-repetitive conversations in "200 Cigarettes," so just consider it a given that each mentioned conversation is boring and repetitive.

Val (Ricci) and her best friend Stephie (Gaby Hoffman) are a couple of Long Island teenagers with thick accents and a fear of the eastern East Village. They are stalked by Tom (Casey Affleck) and Dave (Guillermo Diaz), a couple of Misfits-looking guys who just want to be loved and make their drug delivery. Hoffman gives what is far and away the worst performance in the film, and every second she is on screen is a second of your life you will not get back. Consider yourself warned.

There are a host of other plots involving the other actors, but like the ones already mentioned, they are overdone and boring to boot. Even Elvis Costello's cameo falls flat. The technical aspects of the film are mediocre at best and while the soundtrack offered some promise since this is an MTV film, it opens with "I Want Candy" (a song that sounds infinitely better when recast as "I Want Stanley," as every loyal Detroiter knows) and heads downhill from there.

If you just can't wait to get your dose of one or all of the people in "200 Cigarettes," it would be a much better idea to spend your $7.50 at the video store stocking up on older but better films. This one is a dud that ought to be sufficient to embarrass its players for years to come.

02-26-99