DailyView: Day 200, Movie 283

Day 200 starts off with a TV movie that I found while looking through Robin Williams’s IMDB page. I love Spinal Tap and the various members of the loudest rock band in history and I was unaware of this TV movie/special that aired on New Years Eve in 1992. When I found this, I went searching for the TV movie on the streaming services. I found it on YouTube.

First, a little background info on my introduction to Spinal Tap. I knew of a few of their songs from the Dr. Demento show (particularly Big Bottom). I saw the movie This is Spinal Tap for the first time with my roommate Andy at the University of Iowa Union at a special screening. This was actually a few years after the film flopped in the theaters and as it was becoming a cult hit. I was enraptured by This is Spinal Tap, bought the soundtrack and played it consistently.

In 1992, there was great news. The fictional band Spinal Tap was releasing a very non-fictional album called Break Like the Wind, filled with all new songs from the band. This is the emphasis of the special, playing many of the new songs from the album.

The thee members of Spinal Tap are amazing. David St. Hubbins is portrayed by Michael McKeon, Nigel Tufnel is played by Christopher Guest and Derek Smalls is in reality Harry Shearer. The three of them are talented musicians as well as great improv actors. They wrote all of their own songs and perform their greatest hits in the special.

There were a bunch of special stars appearing in the special. I will say the Robin Williams cameo was a little disturbing because of the ultimate fate of the actor. We saw Mel Torme singing a bit of Sex Farm, a picture with moving lips of Cher singing her duet with Tap, Just Begin Again, Martin Short telling a story about other Tap fans, Jamie Lee Curtis (the wife of Christopher Guest) talking about her lack of memory about her own Spinal Tap experience, Kenny Rogers teaching David St. Hubbins how to golf among others.

MTV personality Martha Quinn hosted the show like she was reporting on Spinal Tap, who was playing the Royal Albert Hall in London. It was billed as Spinal Tap returning home to England where the band was supposedly originally from.

There were several cameos from people who also appeared in This is Spinal Tap playing their same characters. These cameos included Paul Schaffer, Fred Willard, Rob Reiner, and June Chadwick (who plays Jeanine Pettibone-St. Hubbins).

But as with any Spinal Tap show, the music is center stage, and the band brings their best. There are a couple of cameos of the Folksmen (another fictional band created by Michael McKeon, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer, who are part of the Chris Guest film A Mighty Wind) who were meant to open the show for Spinal Tap. This joke came from a couple of real times when they donned the Folksmen outfit to play some folk music ahead of Spinal Tap and the crowds nearly booed them off the stage. Ironic, huh?

This special was a lot of fun and it certainly cemented the legacy of the loudest band ever. I would be curious to know how much of the comedy bits were improvised as much of the actual film was. I am pleased to have found this and enjoyed it tremendously.

DailyView: Day 199, Movie 282

Under my thumb
The guy who once had me down
Under my thumb
The guy who once pushed me around
It’s down to me
Yes it is
The way he does what he’s told
Down to me, the change has come
He’s under my thumb

This song was originally from the Rolling Stones, but it fits perfectly with the story that was being told in the classic biopic, What’s Love Got to Do With It, the life story of Tina Turner and her tempestuous and abusive marriage to Ike Turner.

Born Anna Mae Bullock (Angela Bassett), she discovered her love for singing early in life. When she came across Ike Turner (Laurence Fishburne), the two hit it off both musically and romantically. Taking the stage name of Tina Turner, Anna Mae married Ike and became a sensation with him.

However, as the years went on, the abusive side of Ike Turner started to show itself and the ongoing pressures of writing songs and dealing with the record companies only made Ike Turner worse and Anna Mae shouldered the physical burden of the stress.

She attempted to escape the violence with her children, but Ike found her and dragged her back. The scenes of physical abuse were difficult to watch, and the strength that Tina Turner showed in finally breaking away from the violence was inspiring.

Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne were both Oscar nominated for their roles in What’s Love Got to Do With It and it is completely worth it. Both are transcendent performances with both Bassett and Fishburne losing themselves in the roles. These two actors took what could have been a typical biopic and made something special.

The music is great. The film does not dive into the period where Tina Turner struggled to work solo, instead moving along to her amazing success with the song “What’s Love Got to Do With It”, a theme of the 1980s.

Try and watch the powerhouse performances and not be affected. I had to look away a couple of times in disgust as Fishburne was embodying the abusive rocker and Bassett struggled to make it through. The scene between the two of them in the limo was cathartic for the audience as much as it was for Tina.

What’s Love Got to Do With It is a fantastic film with amazing acting. Even if you are not a huge fan of Tina Turner, you can watch this biopic as a survival tale, a story of a woman who found her strength and confidence to get herself out from under the thumb of her violent husband and become even more popular than she ever was with him.

DailyView: Day 199, Movie 281

One of the films that will be leaving HBO Max at the end of November came up for the DailyView today. It was a movie that I had not heard of before featuring Sir Anthony Hopkins in an adaption of a Stephen King work.

The film also stars the late Anton Yelchin in an early role. While some of the other child actors in Hearts in Atlantis were not very strong, Yelchin showed the promise as an aspiring actor, as he handled a couple of powerful scenes and stood well opposite an Oscar winner in Hopkins.

When an aging man (David Morse) returned to his hometown for the funeral of a childhood friend, the began to reminisce about the time he met a mysterious man named Ted Brautigan (Sir Anthony Hopkins), who moved into an open room just after the death of Bobby’s (Anton Yelchin) father. Bobby and Ted bonded as Ted told Bobby a strange and somewhat horrifying story about men who were after him. Bobby would discover that Ted was more perceptive than he thought.

This film had a low Rotten Tomatoes score, but I did not think it was that bad. In fact, it was decent. Yes, there was problems with it. In particular, there was a lot of forced sentimentality which did not feel right. Some of it worked, but a lot went over the top. Another issue was that the dialogue was not good, especially the dialogue written for the kid actors. It did not feel accurate.

Bobby’s mother, Liz (Hope Davis) was a terrible character and was shown to be selfish. Sure, we see a terrible event that happened to her during the film, but it was not a reason to be that terrible prior to it. I thought she got off pretty easy at the end from Bobby.

Anton Yelchin did a great job and should have grown up to win Oscars. It is a sad situation involving the car accident that took his life earlier in the 2010s.

Anthony Hopkins was his typical outstanding self, taking the strange story and characters to a level that one would expect from a top line actor as Hopkins.

Stephen King must have an issue with bullies because it seems as if all of the kid bullies in his stories are just the worst people ever, and this is not exception. They are never quite the most developed of characters in his work.

In the end, Hearts in Atlantis was a decent enough watch and, despite its flaws, I thought its strengths surpassed the problems.

DailyView: Day 198, Movie 280

I love baseball. There have been so many amazing stories over the decades of baseball and the story being told in the Netflix documentary, The Battered Bastards of Baseball, is one of those.

After the departure of the local Portland minor league baseball team, actor Bing Russell, father of Kurt Russell and actor from Bonanza and the Magnificent Seven (1960), set up an independent Single A baseball organization named the Portland Mavericks, competing with other minor league baseball teams aligned with MLB clubs. The Mavericks were together from 1973-1977 and experienced an unlikely level of success.

Portland Mavericks kept making me picture the Cleveland Indians from the movie Major League. The same idea of bringing in players who the rest of the league may not value and having them exceed all expectations is on display in this documentary as much as there was in that classic baseball film.

Some of the ideas that came from this time are staples in the world of baseball now, such as Big League Chew. It also paints a picture of Major League Baseball not being a supporter of the little team in Portland that was defeating the minor leaguers owned from MLB teams.

There were several interesting real life characters that helped to create a sensation with the Portland Mavericks.

The documentary is an easy watch, quick run time and tells a fascinating story that you may not be familiar with in the wolrd of baseball. All baseball fans should take the hour and 20 minutes and watch this documentary.

DailyView: Day 197, Movie 279

With the Rocky IV special release tonight that I will be attending, I needed to dip into the well of Charlie Chaplin shorts once again this morning and I came out with a great one.

The Cure is set just prior to prohibition in the USA and this plot involves the potential evils of alcohol, and perhaps some of the fun of it as well.

There are some exceptionally funny sequences that really bring out the mastery of the slapstick format that Chaplin is so brilliant at performing. There is a scene involving Chaplin and a revolving door that is amazingly choreographed and brilliantly laid out. There is another scene with a masseur that devolves into a fistfight of epic porportions.

As always, the silent film is anchored with the music. The music changes and flows with the antics of Chaplin, blending beautifully with the visual smorgasbord.

Chaplin seemed to be in his Little Tramp character, but it was noticeable that he was not dressed in the same manner as he usually was. He did not have his black suit coat or the recognizable bowler hat (though it does make a cameo in the film). The slight change was very effective as well.

Charlie Chaplin is the master of these silent shorts. With all due respect to Buster Keaton (who I have watched a few times recently), Chaplin makes this incredibly difficult art form look remarkably simple and totally entertaining.

DailyView: Day 196, Movie 278

Studio Ghibli is one of the most successful. beloved animation studios of all-time and has created some of the greatest, most beautiful animated movies ever released including such classics as Spirited Away, Princes Mononoke, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Those were all traditional style of animation with each frame hand drawn, creating images of beauty and wonder. For better or worse, Earwig and the Witch, which debuted in the last part of 2020, was the first animated movie from the studio that was made with full 3D CG animation.

Baby Earwig was dropped off at St. Morwald’s Home for Children by her mother. Her mother was a witch and left Earwig to keep her safe. Renamed Erica by the matron, Erica reached 10-years old and was quite rambunctious. When she was “adopted” by a strange couple,  Bella Yaga and Mandrake, Erica realized that she was only taken for another pair of hands.

When Bella Yaga revealed that she was a witch herself, Erica tried to bargain with her. She said she would help Bella Yaga if she would teach her magic. Bella Yaga had no intention of teaching magic to anyone and this only serves to irritate Erica.

Meanwhile, Erica discovered an old tape with a song on it, listed Earwig, and discovered that the cat, Thomas, could speak.

While the CG of the film was fine, it was a sharp difference from the beautiful animation of the past Studio Ghibli films. This was rather unremarkable, with only the animation of Mandrake being anything more than average. The animation, being a standout of the studio, does not make this film special. In fact, I would say that the look of the characters were lacking any depth or realism, especially in the faces which are like marionettes.

None of the characters are interesting. The story is fairly simplistic and apparent. And it wraps up in a rapid manner that felt like it was out of nowhere.

Overall, this was not to the level of the Studio Ghibli films and, if this is their new direction, they may want to reconsider.

DailyView: Day 195, Movie 277

I had stumbled across a book I bought a few years ago by YouTube movie reviewer Chris Stuckmann, called The Film Buff’s Bucket List: The 50 Movies of the 200s to See Before You Die. I remember purchasing the book because I always enjoyed and respected the opinions of Stuckmann. After finding it tonight, I flipped through to see if there were any good choices that I could use for the DailyView. In the 2004-2007 section of the book, I found an entry for A History of Violence.

I had heard the title before, but I really had no idea about the premise or of the plot, which was basically what Stuckmann had written. The three paragraphs that Stuckmann had written intrigued me and I went to try and find it. I rented it on Amazon Prime and, with a nice run time of 1 hour and 36 minutes, I had found my DailyView binge movie for the night.

Once it started, I was completely swept up in the story and it took me on an unexpected journey through the life of Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) and his family. I had no idea where the film was going to take me, but I was all aboard from the start.

Tom was a small town man working at a diner, with his lawyer wife Edie (Maria Bello), his high school aged son Jack (Ashton Holmes) and little daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes). Then, one night, a pair of violent men arrived at the diner with every intention of causing trouble and hurting people. Tom jumped into action and was able to kill the two perpetrators in self-defense.

Tom became a local cable news sensation as the media arrived and wanted to know everything about Tom. Unfortunately, the word got out to other factions who were interested in Tom and his past.

This was such a great movie. Viggo Mortensen was absolutely sensational as Tom, one minute mild-mannered local man and the next a viciously violent killer. William Hurt appeared later in the film and I will not spoil the role, but he was excellent too. The performances were all fantastic.

There were some times in the early part of the story that made you think that Jack would be at the center of the plot. He had to face off with a bully at school and he responded in a violent manner, but this was just a part of the story, with everything leading back to Tom.

David Cronenberg directed the film and does a really solid job of providing a contrast between the lifestyle that Tom and his family was living with the past world that seemingly would not stay in the past. The violence was brutal, but worked beautifully in the context it appeared in. There were plenty of scenes that leave the viewer uncomfortable and ill at ease, which is great and works with the tone and theme that Cronenberg was going for.

The final scene of the film left me a little cold, but I believe the uncertainty and the uncomfortableness I was feeling, along with the desire to have things work out more was something the creators were going for. Even though I wanted more, the ending was the perfect ending for what Cronenberg was going for.

If you can go into the movie with as little knowledge as you can, as I was able to do, this is a wonderful and surprising film.

DailyView: Day 194, Movie 276

Today, for the DailyView, we jump into the world of Japanese animation with one of the classic films based on a seinen manga series, Ghost in the Shell. Directed by Masamune Shirow, Ghost in the Shell is a cyberpunk thriller animated anime that has become one of the most iconic available.

In Ghost in a Shell, the year is 2029 and humans can be augmented or even replaced with cybernetic parts. This may include the “cyberbrain, a mechanical casing for the human brain that allows access to the Internet and other networks. An often-mentioned term is “ghost”, referring to the consciousness inhabiting the body (the “shell”)” (Wikipedia)

Our main protagonist is Major Motoko Kusanagi, one of the leaders of the assault-team of Public Security Section 9, was after a fellow ghost, the criminal Puppet Master.

I will say that I had a hard time staying focused on the film and my distraction made it a difficult film to understand. I should have given it more of my attention, because it just does not seem that Ghost on the Shell is an effective film to put on in the background while you work on other items. So this review may not be as fair as it should be. I did try to refocus as the film pregressed, but by then I was confused.

The animation was beautiful and was a definite standout. It used the process of “digitally generated animation” (DGA) which combines cel animation and computer graphics and digit data. It brought some wonderful imagery and animation to the storytelling of Ghost in the Shell.

I watched the English dubbed version and the voice work was fine. While I usually do not like the dubbed versions, with the animation it was not as obvious as the live action and the English voice acting was fine.

There are a lot of good to this movie, but I was still confused. That is probably my fault, but Ghost in the Shell never truly grabbed my attention either.

DailyView: Day 193, Movie 275

Ben Kingsley has played some amazing parts in his career, from Gandhi to Trevor Slattery. There may be no better role for the actor than the role of Don Logan in the psychological crime black comedy film, Sexy Beast.

Safecracker Gal (Ray Winstone) had retired with his wife Deedee (Amanda Redmon) to a villa in Spain, leaving the life of crime behind him. When Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) comes to his villa to attempt to recruit him for another job, robbing a bank’s vault planned by crimelord Teddy Bess (Ian McShane). Gal did not want to accept the job, but the immature and violent Don Logan was a difficult man to refuse.

Kinsley is clearly the standout of this movie. His performance as the foul-mouthed, childish, vicious sociopath is just astounding and borderline comical. Kinsley walks the line of parody with Don Logan the entire time, creating a character that is just to the left of ridiculous.

Ray Winstone played off the ravings of Kingsley beautifully, doing his very best to tip-toe around the crazy criminal.

The film is shot with a great deal of style and flair by director Jonathan Glazer, flipping between moments in time throughout the second and third acts.

And the very last scene is a laugh out loud moment that I won’t spoil for you right now, but it was an unexpected treat.

Sexy Beast is an excellent British film, with plenty of different tones scattered throughout. Ben Kingsley showed the level of his acting range as he went with a role that was completely opposite that of Gandhi.

DailyView: Day 192, Movie 274

Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant are involved in a mystery about stolen money and a group of men who were trying to recover that money under any circumstances. But how involved is Cary Grant? And did he kill to retrieve it?

The 1963 film spun a really good mystery with a group of characters and a good conclusion.

The film included Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy, Ned Glass, and Jacque Marin along with Grant and Hepburn. The strong cast made work the mystery component of the story.

A man is thrown from a train. The man turned out to be the husband of his unhappy wife, Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn). Turned out that the man had stolen a large sum of money from his collection of crooks and they wanted the money back, and they assumed that Mrs. Lampert had it. However, she was still reeling from the discovery that her husband was not whom he said he was.

Mrs. Lampert was approached by a man named Peter (Cary Grant) who turned out to be involved in the case somehow. He actually had several names, giving her a different one every time.

Honestly, the mystery was cool, but the whole Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn romance within the mystery did not work as well for me. It painted Hepburn’s character in a fickle light. I know that the role would have been typical of Hollywood during the era, but it still did not make it great. Hepburn’s character was too into this liar and changed her mind about him multiple times. Every time he told her another fake name, she wound up playing it off as it were nothing.

I would have liked to have seen Hepburn more in control of the situation and not be a basic damsel in distress. I know the movies of the time did not have this type of heroine involved, but Audrey Hepburn was a huge name in the movies.

Still, the film worked more than it did not for me. I did enjoy the mystery (even though I had figured out the truth earlier). Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn are charming and entertaining with their bickering and their banter.

DailyView: Day 191, Movie 273

I have always been a fan of Mark Twain and I had wanted a proper biopic of the author for a long time. When I found the former TV film Mark Twain and Me on Disney +, I was excited to take a look.

Jason Robards played Samuel L. Clemens, aka Mark Twain after he met the young girl Dorothy Quick (Amy Stewart) on a cruise during the last few years of his life. The old man and the young teen formed a close bond and they spent many days together, breaking out of the morose and regrets that Clemens’ life had become filled with.

This is a true story based on the memoirs of novelist Dorothy Quick, published originally as “Enchantment.” I have always believed that the best biopics were the ones that took a section of the person’s life and focused in on in instead of covering the entire lifespan. This biopic does a wonderful job of that.

Robards was fantastic as Samuel Clemens (or SLC as he is referred to throughout the film by Dorothy) and Amy Stewart was solid in her first major role as Dorothy. The two of them had chemistry and had a natural surrogate father-daughter relationships. Dorothy was able to help Clemens reunite and appreciate the relationship he had with his actual daughter Jean (Talia Shire).

Though the film relied heavily on the positive messages of the story, it did not shy away from the tragedy that had filled Clemens’ life during this time, including the death of Jean and his aversion to Christmastime.

I would still like more biopics with Mark Twain at the center, but this one was a pleasant surprise tonight.

DailyView: Day 190, Movie 272

With tonight’s schedule viewing of Eternals, I had to find something short to watch this morning to satisfy the DailyView, so I broke into the list of black and white shorts and found the Buster Keaton short One Week from 1920.

One Week tells the story of a newly married couple who are just starting their lives together by building their dream house. However, their house turned out to be a little more than what they had expected.

While I was not as much of a fan of the first film I watched of Buster Keaton (especially when compared to Charlie Chaplin) One Week was a considerably better effort. It was filled with some great slapstick moments, several impressive practical stunts (apparently the spinning house was built on a turntable to create the visual gag). The gags involving the house and ladders around it were several times inspired.

Sybil Seely co-starred in the short with Buster Keaton as the newlyweds. She had a definite screen presence and is a nice match with Keaton.

I was not a fan of the score though which repetitively repeated the same melody through the entire run of the film. It was one of those scores that burrows into your head and stay there unwelcomed.

In the end, I enjoyed One Week more than the other Buster Keaton film I saw and it worked beautifully for the DailyView today.

DailyView: Day 189, Movie 271

A remake of a 1968 film brings together Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo in a romance/heist movie which updates the movie called The Thomas Crown Affair.

Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) was a bored billionaire who amused himself by stealing priceless art just for the challenge. When insurance investigator and art “bounty hunter” Catherine Banning (Rene Russo) joined the case, Crown found a greater challenge than art thievery.

The cat and mouse game between Thomas and Catherine played out in the foreground of the police investigation into the theft of a classic Monet painting. The chemistry between them is apparent and both Brosnan and Russo are tremendous.

If the relationship between Thomas and Catherine does not work, this movie flops big time, but they work extremely well. I did think at first that the relationship was a bit forced, but it developed quickly. It was clear that she was playing him while he was playing her and that the two characters were very much alike.

Denis Leary and Frankie Faison played police detectives and they are great too. They interact with Russo in a fun and engaging way. They both understood what was happening and just going along with her in an attempt to catch Crown.

Faye Dunaway appears as Thomas Crown’s psychiatrist. Dunaway starred in the original The Thomas Crown Affair so adding her was an intriguing casting choice.

This was a lot of fun and enjoyable. Two attractive and engaging actors playing characters that are trying to find the ability to trust one another and to make their relationship work.

DailyView: Day 188, Movie 270

After looking for awhile across several different streaming services, I settled on Peacock for the night’s DailyView and I came across a comedy featuring the well-known British character, Mr. Bean, played vigorously by Rowan Atkinson.

The plot of this film is basically thin. Mr. bean, who had won a trip to Cannes, France, got stranded with a boy Stepan (Max Baldry) who was separated from his father in a train station. Mr. Bean and Stepan try and work their way to Cannes to reunite the boy and his father, while taking some time on the beach.

The rest of the film is practically all hijinks from the slapstick character.

There is a subplot (sort of) with Willem Dafoe filming a movie for the Cannes Film Festival. One of the bit actresses (Emma de Caunes) he had appearing in the film becomes involved in helping Mr. Bean get to Cannes.

The film is truly silly and features very little in story, but the character of Mr. Bean does have his moments of humor and charm, especially in an inspired section where Mr. Bean is performing on the streets, lip synching and dancing for money.

If you were a fan of Mr. Bean, this is probably for you. If you were not (such as me), you may find enough silliness here to justify the hour and a half run time. Mr. Bean’s Holiday feels like a group of bits strung together without too much concern for the story. There is a bit with Mr. Bean on a bicycle chasing a car with a chicken in the back that had Mr. Bean’s bus ticket stuck on its foot. There is a bit of Mr. Bean pretending to be in the army. There is a bit of Mr. Bean driving and trying to stay awake. Several of these are funny, which helps the film out.

I knew of the character of Mr. bean, but I had never seen him before, so his mostly silent/ barely coherent speaking was a shock to me and did take some time to get used to, but once I did, I did not mind it. He had a definite Charlie Chaplin vibe to him as the film progressed.

The connection between Mr. Bean and Stepan was sweet and I was rooting for them to get the boy back to his poppa. There was only really minor conflict, which was mostly from Mr. Bean himself.

I have seen worse comedies, that is for sure. If you like British comedy, this could give you a decent experience. It is fluffy and inconsequential, but does have some laughs.

DailyView: Day 187, Movie 269

The calendar has shifted to November which allows us to move away from the horror flicks and into other areas of the movie world. We’ll continue to watch some horror movies, but it will not as exclusive as it was in October. The first film out of October was suggested by my friend Todd at ComicWorld. He told me he remembered when this film, which was set in Greenfield, Iowa with some other scenes shot in Winterset, Iowa, was being shot.

Cold Turkey starred Dick Van Dyke as Reverend Clayton Brooks, the small town reverend who was the morale leader for the fictional town of Eagle Rock. Rev. Brooks spends a large chunk of the film trying to inspire the town to stop smoking and then to keep them from doing it.

The Valiant Tobacco Company made a shocking offer. They offered $25 million dollars to any town in the USA that could stop smoking for a month. The idea, which came from the mind of advertising exec Merwin Wren (Bob Newhart), was that no town would be able to get their whole population to agree to stop smoking for 30 days and that it would provide free publicity and a humanitarian image for the tobacco company.

That was when Eagle Rock stepped in.

The small Iowa town took the challenge, got their whole population to sign up for the pledge and started their gigantic smoke-out.

The film was a satire on the addictiveness of cigarettes and what some people would do to smoke. It also looked at the greediness of the human being and how money may inspire them even more than the addictive cigarettes.

There is a cast full of great comedic actors including Dick Van Dyke and Bob Newhart. There is also Tom Poston, Jean Stapleton, Vincent Gardenia, Pay Goulding, Pippa Scott, Paul Benedict, Bob Elliott, Edward Everett Horton, Barnard Hughes, Graham Jarvis, and Barbara Cason.

There are some silly moments in the film, but it has some funny moments too. As unlikely the plot may be, the film does a good job of personalizing the struggle for the different characters. Dick Van Dyke was at the center of the chaos, carrying the movie.

The conclusion was out of nowhere and had a little bit of everything. The final shot of the film was remarkably ironic and I loved it.

Cold Turkey had its ups and downs, but the film held together and provided a definite satire of the cigarette companies and the human condition.