BEFORE: Dick Van Dyke carries over from "What a Way To Go!" - TCM had aired a tribute to him a few months back when he won the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Award, and that also brought me "Fitzwilly" and "Divorce American Style", but this is the last of those films. Plus it's the end of the thematic chain that I discussed a few weeks ago, which was a matter of some concern as I didn't really have a film that would logically follow this one, or one that would share an actor. What did I decide to do? Tune in tomorrow to find out...
THE PLOT: Hoping for positive publicity, a tobacco company offers $25 million to any American town that quits smoking for 30 days. Amidst a media frenzy, Eagle Rock, Iowa accepts the challenge while the company's PR man tries to sabotage the effort.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Insider" (Movie #394)
AFTER: I get that this is satire, but I'm not exactly sure what kind. The situation, offering a town a lot of money (in 1970 dollars, at least) to quit smoking seems like a great jumping-off point. We can watch as the townspeople all lose their shit in various ways - some turn to overeating, some turn to sex, and some just become neurotic messes who explode in anger at the least provocation. But if the people can all pull together, and collect the check from the tobacco industry, they can more than balance the city budget, and make up for the financial losses of the previous few years, and make the capital improvements necessary to lure a new military plant to town.
First off, I wouldn't take any tobacco executive at their word. Aren't these the people who placed ads in the 1950's saying how great smoking was for people's health? Didn't they strong-arm TV commercials into popular TV shows like "The Flintstones" and the Ed Sullivan Show? Why would anyone take this as anything more than a simple publicity stunt? Sure enough, the tobacco company has no intention of paying out, because they KNOW how addictive cigarettes are. And all they need is for one of the town's 4,006 residents to crack.
Which brings up a question - how does everyone KNOW that nobody in the town had a smoke on the sly? They're certainly capable of it, because a few residents were depicted as closet smokers before the ban went into effect. Who policed everyone in the privacy of their own homes? The honor system? What the heck is that? We've already established that smokers have no honor, and don't care about anyone, least of all themselves.
I get that 1970 was a different time. Heck, even the town doctor seen here smoked before every surgery. "Just one to steady the nerves," he probably told himself. Today, if you find out your doctor smokes, with everything we now know about the effects, you'd probably find another doctor ASAP.
I grew up in a "dry" town in Massachusetts, meaning there were no liquor stores or even markets that sold beer. But people could just drive to the next town over and find bars, liquor stores and restaurants that served alcohol, so what did the local statute really accomplish? If anything, it encouraged more drunk driving by making people drive to the next town to get loaded. (Really, it just made residents of my town feel superior.) So why couldn't the citizens of Eagle Rock just all drive to the next town to have a smoke?
So, what's the takeaway, here? That it's hard to quit smoking? We kind of knew that. That people will do anything for money, including enduring great hardship? Again, sort of a given. That tobacco flacks are a bunch of weasels? Again, duh. It's hard to discern any notable message from the events in this film, and I always say this about points - you should probably try to have one.
With the appearance of local government, big government, the military, religion, big tobacco, advertising, sexual politics - there are so many potential targets here, but the movie doesn't seem to take big swipes at any of them, and instead chooses to focus on the individuals going through withdrawal - who are all nuts, but are they wacky enough? The benchmark here is probably the film "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", which also detailed how far people would go for money, but that film depicted a speedy treasure hunt across California, and this one just shows people NOT doing something. It's active vs. passive, guess which one is more interesting?
There is a swipe at (I'm assuming) the John Birch society, which was a national right-wing group in the 1960's, that stood against Communism, the civil rights movement and big government, and for personal freedoms. Imagine the Tea Party led by Sen. McCarthy - they're still around today, and they support the dismantling of the Federal Reserve System. Because that couldn't possibly cause any bad effects for the U.S....
But would it have been so bad to just plainly state the known consequences of smoking, as a little background as to WHY people should quit? You know, just to make sure everyone is on the same page. They reference cigarette ads being banned from television, but they don't get into exactly why this happened. This film could easily be remade, or perhaps updated - however, since the number of smokers has decreased in the last few decades (probably because the older ones aren't around any more...) you could just change it to a town that has to give up fatty foods and collectively lose a certain amount of weight. I know some towns in the U.S. have taken on similar challenges.
Also starring Vincent Gardenia (last seen in "The Front Page"), Bob Newhart (last seen in "Horrible Bosses"), Tom Poston, Jean Stapleton (last seen in "Michael"), Barnard Hughes, Pippa Scott, Edward Everett Horton (last seen in "Sex and the Single Girl"), Bob Elliott, Ray Goulding, with cameos from Paul Benedict (last seen in "Cocktail"), M. Emmet Walsh (last seen in "Slap Shot").
RATING: 3 out of 10 massages
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