200 CIGARETTES (1999)
A Film Review
Copyright Dragan Antulov 2004
The author of this review lives in a country where foreign films are
subtitled. Since most of those films are from Hollywood, this reflects
in English being spoken a notch better than in countries where
foreign films get dubbed. Audiences have opportunity to pick certain
words, phrases and accents and compare them with the text in
subtitles. This subtitling at times can have effect on general
impression of a movie. One of examples of such phenomenon
happened with 200 CIGARETTES, 1999 comedy directed by Risa
Bramon Garcia.
The plot of this film is set in New York during New Years Eve 1981.
Many young people are going, or at least trying to go, to a party
hosted by Monica (played by Martha Plimpton) and her best friend
Hillary (played by Catherine Kellner). While frustrated Monica
awaits that anyone shows up, many characters are falling in and out
of love or at least try to experience some kind of romantic adventure
during the night. Those events are often witnessed and commented
by a cab driver (played by Dave Chappelle).
200 CIGARETTES is a MTV production that tries to employ the
formula that brought success to George Lucas with his AMERICAN
GRAFFITI - drama that takes place in one night and revolves around
variety of different characters, period setting and plenty of period
songs as soundtrack. This was the first directorial effort of Garcia,
previously known as casting director, and it shows in the film. The
humour in the film is lame, there are many anachronisms and Garcia
fails to compensate the blandness of script. The only good thing
about 200 CIGARETTES, apart from its relatively short lenghth, is
very good acting by some of the best young talents of late 1990s
Hollywood. This is especially the case with Kate Hudson who, in her
first role, clearly shows that she inherited comedic talent from her
mother Goldie Hawn.
However, the most laughs the author of this review got from 200
CIGARETTES didn't come from the film itself. The quality of
translation was such that the words spoken had little to do with
words in subtitles, thus creating many amusing moments and
making sure that the name of translator becomes legendary among
filmophiles in my country.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
Review written on October 7th 2004
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax
http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in
Croatian
http://www.ofcs.org - Online Film Critics Society
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