The Smokers

The Smokers

Spoilers herein. You already know this is a disaster: an edgy film that is incompetently tepid. It's placed near "Ginger Snaps" in tone and "Business of Strangers" in plot. But it is so inept it hurts. But you might want to see it anyway. Sometimes when a very good actor finds herself under a clueless director, interesting things happen: she makes her own way, filling spaces that the director is wholly unaware of. Thora Birch is only on the screen a few moments here, as she was on her way from "Beauty" to "Ghost." But she is incredible. She does the Jack Nicholson thing, holding a tension like many actors. Holding it internally, some distance under the skin. So far, pretty ordinary. But once in a while she'll move that tension to just outside her skin. What makes it Nicholsonian is the way she does it: sometimes dramatically so we notice and sometimes subtly so that we are put off. Four girls wear makeup masks. Only she knows how to use that in her craft. At the end, she is walking into the graduation and turns around and sticks out her tongue. Compare that to a similar situation: Jack coming into the asylum at the beginning of "Cuckoo," with the same glance/shift of presence. Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.

So these three girls are outcasts, because they smoke but mostly because they are infantile. There's Karen (Freaks & Geek's/Dawson's Creek's Busy Phillips), a scholarship girl who is as irritating but not quite as sexy as Shelley Winters in "The Poseidon Adventure", and Lisa (Keri Lynn Pratt who was Miss New Hampshire a couple years earlier), and Jefferson (Ms. Swain-everyone's favorite "Lolita"). So guess who the writer/director uses for her most erotic shots? That's right Phillips the screaming buffalo. And they wonder why these things lose money. My guess is a no-talent and soon to be pornmaker woman happened to see a 1968 movie called "Three In the Attic" (which has never been released on video) and thought that she could get away with stealing the story. So she began to remake the film without buying the rights or acknowledging that it was a remake. Her boyfriend, who financed it so he could co-star and drool on "Lolita", panicked and ordered her to make last minute script changes to avoid a lawsuit. At least this would account for the totally nonsensical storyline. One easy and generally reliable way to avoid dogmeat stuff like this is to check out the industry experience of whoever is credited with art direction and production design. If it is their first credit you know the picture will be horrible. Watch this only is you are determined to see everything Thora Birch has done. She made this between "American Beauty" (before its release) and "Ghost World". Although I am sure that she would like it off her resume she actually does a good job in a small role. You recognize her voice more than her face and it takes a while because you are struggling internally with disbelief, like if Emma Thompson had made an appearance in "The New Guy".

It Isn't pointless trash, and Thora Birch does deliver, even if she has a small part in this film. I've actually been to the place where they filmed this movie, in Wisconsin, and it's a really neat building. It's an old girls boarding school that isn't open anymore. It's right by the lakeshore. All the actresses give good performances in this movie, and there is a good message that is realized at the end of the film. I give it 5 stars, go out and rent it NOW. AND sorry, but the music, acting, script, cinematography, sound, and direction do NOT fail by any means. First of all, some people OBVIOUSLY don't realize that people like this DO exist as "crazy" as they may seem. The world is filled with many diverse and different people. Not all movies are the same and aimed to create money. And actually, Busy Phillips character isn't that "over the top". She barely qaulifies as psycho. (Not that she's a bad actress) Kerri Lynn Pratt does a good job of playing a cowardly girl, who "simpers and whimpers" with five career steps forward for doing a good job of her character. And as far as the cosmetics goes, Wal-Mart could NEVER have that decent quality of makeup, (Captain Ed/ Minnesooooooooota). You obviously don't appreciate or see anything in good film, even if it sometimes IS intended to be campy.

i LOVE this movie! its actually one of my favorites! i really don't have anything to complain about except that i think it could have been longer! I think it's indie vibe and supposed 'bad acting' are a few of its many charms! and there are memorable characters AND quotes worth watching the movie for! perhaps i appreciate it more because i went to a boarding school as well and i can relate to a lot of it. or perhaps i just have a better sense of taste than the others! i don't know, all i have to say really, is that, myself and everyone that *i* know LOVE this movie so if you have never seen it, i think its at least worth watching ONCE to judge for yourself!

because they are all dead on. This movie was absolute crap from start to finish. Sometimes when you see a movie you haven't heard of on the video store shelf you find a gem, but not this one. Do not rent this, unless you are curious to see just how bad it is.

OK, let's look past the fact that the director, Christina Peters (aka Kat Slater), went on to direct a profusion of pulsating * including, but not limited to, "Young Sluts, Inc." 1 thru 15 and "Cum Swappers" 1 thru 4. Let's look past the fact that basically every review is slamming this film, and the IMDb rating is 2.4 (for reference, the movie "Electrocuting an Elephant" is rated 3.7, meaning audiences would rather watch an elephant fried alive than see this movie). Regardless of all that, this movie rocks. If you liked the dark comedy "Heathers" (1988) about a string of bizarre deaths at a high school, if you liked the Christina Ricci flick "Pumpkin" (2002) about a stuck-up sorority chick who falls for a handicapped kid, if you liked the book "Catcher in the Rye", I think you'll enjoy "The Smokers". The plot is about 3 prep school girls, confused in matters of love, sex and authority, who get their hands on a gun and decide to lead their own sexual revolution by raping men at gunpoint. First of all, don't flip out because there's nothing explicit, and in fact the "rapes" don't exactly go as planned. Seriously, what guy could perform while staring down the barrel of a .44? Now let's dig deeper for a minute. Check out the awesome symbolism of the story. The gun, of course, is a symbol of male sexuality. It represents the "power" men have over women. Here we have a bunch of females who attempt to steal that power and use it against men. The results are unpredictable, and although the movie proceeds with a feminist premise, it becomes a statement about the dangers of fanaticism. Although I'm a guy, I consider myself to be a feminist. I love movies with interesting twists on feminism, movies where the tables are turned and we get interesting new viewpoints. That's why I really liked this movie. Be forewarned, it starts out a bit confusing, setting up the characters and their complex social hierarchy. The second half is when things suddenly pick up speed, throwing in some nice twists and snowballing into a spectacular climax. I thought the acting was great. Bear in mind these are high school kids, so they're going to talk and act like high school kids, not like Ben Kingsley doing Gandhi. I thought they did a perfect job. My only real gripe with the movie is that the audio on the DVD isn't the greatest, and there were a few times I had to rewatch a scene with subtitles on. I think that's a minor nitpick, though. Feminists, non-feminists and interested parties will probably enjoy this flick. It sets up a challenging social metaphor for you to decipher. If you like challenges like this, also check out the films "Attack the Gas Station!" (a Korean film about a bunch of kids who attack a gas station, a metaphor for Korean society), "The Ferpect Crime" (an Italian film about a man trapped in the women's section of a department store), and "The Host" (another Korean film about a sea monster (Western imperialism) terrorizing a city (Korean Culture).

I think this movie is laden with heavyhanded irony; while a lot of it is inexplicable, poorly edited and just plain strange, the main thing I took away from it was that while these girls thought they were starting a "revolution", they were only hurting themselves. Case in point; the girls try to get back at Guy #1 by trying to force sex on him at gunpoint. It fails, but they think it was a success. The rest of the males in town think it's hot, and want it to happen to them. A couple of more feeble attempts are made at controlling males at gunpoint, but also fail miserably. Instead of realizing that they are getting into these situations themselves, and allowing themselves to be used by guys, they get even angrier at the men of the world. The whole dynamic of the girls' lives seems to be that they are rich prep-school stoners who dress flamboyantly and have rigid, antiseptic relationships with their parents. The decor of their rooms and the decor of the girls themselves is probably monstrously tacky on purpose; not meant to be taken literally. It sort of shows you what's in their heads; fluff, feathers, glitter and smoke. In their desperate attempt to be feminist/radical/revolutionaries who defend the honor of women everywhere, they take the completely wrong path and wind up raped, messed up and worse. They allowed themselves to be used, and then got furious at the men for using them. They handled the whole thing in a childish, super-hero-wannabe way. And they paid for it. I think Thora Birch looked cute in those goofy getups. Even though her character made little or no sense. I saw her as the ultimate rich-kid-acting-out-against-parental-control archetype. And her now-learned sister gives her a nice life lesson

Little need to reiterate that this is a terrible film; the other reviews do that well. I wanted to add a particular displeasure not yet mentioned: The cliché ending filmed at convocation, with a voice-over of the Animal House/American Graffiti "Where are they now?" blurbs. Suddenly, in the last minute of the film, it decides that it is a retrospective! Until that point it was a 2001 movie depicting 2001 girls, but now we are to imagine it as a movie from 2030 looking back at the turn of the century! Obviously this was tacked on in postproduction as a way of cleaning up the end and trying to give the picture more of a direction. Strange, though, that they had Dominique Swain do it; apparently her voice and diction hasn't changed at all in the intervening 30 years, and she still speaks like a teenager. Guess no-one was paying too much attention. Neither should you...