October 14–21, 1999

movie shorts

Breakfast of Champions

Probably the most lambasted countercultural offshoot since Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, the horribly-reviewed Champions seems to be under attack less for what it is than for what it represents: the (supposedly) bankrupt ideals of a deluded era.

In truth, Breakfast is largely a failure — you know you’re in trouble when Nick Nolte is the funniest thing in your movie. But it’s as genuine an attempt to wrestle with the dead-end of suburban ideals as American Beauty, and if less successful, it’s also less smug. Nolte, in fact, gives an excellent performance as sniveling, manic, cross-dressing car salesman Harry LeSabre, and Lukas Haas is tenderly funny as Dwayne’s flaming nightclub-singer offspring. The main (bewildering) fault is the casting of Bruce Willis as auto king Dwayne Hoover, a highly stylized part that calls for chops the actor simply doesn’t have.

As every review has mentioned, Breakfast is indeed "incoherent" and sometimes hysterical, but the final confrontation between Hoover and his creator/author Kilgore Trout (a somewhat hapless Albert Finney), one in which Trout satirically confirms that the whole world has, in fact, been created for Hoover’s convenience, strikes a muffled blow against upper-class narcissism. Also with Barbara Hershey, Omar Epps, Glenne Headley, Vicki Lewis, and a fleeting appearance by Kurt Vonnegut himself.

—Sam Adams