The Smokers

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...

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

"The Smokers" is a shabby flick about three high school senior females who smoke (hence the title) and, for reasons unknown, go off on a bitch bender about the control they believe males have over females particularly in regard to sex. So, armed with a hand gun they set out to level the playing field. The film is apparently supposed to be a slice-of-life coming-of-age drama but the production is so messy it could also be a dark comedy or satire but fits best in the catch-all genre of "bad movie". The players look stupid and behave stupidly though the film does almost manage to achieve poignancy a few times. Given poor quality of everything from screenplay to direction to supporting cast acting to sound to costuming to makeup....etc., there's little reason for anyone to waste their time on this flick. (D)

There's not many movies where I seriously consider not seeing it all the way through. I watch 5-12 movies a week, new releases and classics, and typically I see them all through to the bitter end.

But 20 minutes into "The Smokers" I was fighting a most uncharacteristic urge to hit the Stop button.

And 30 minutes into the film I found myself in great sympathy of those animals who gnaw their legs off to escape a trap.

I picked up the film on spec because it had some good people involved with it. And I cannot hold them at fault for my discomfort -- all of the actors do their best with the material. (Thora Birch is a standout as the younger sister.)

But it is the material itself which is at the root of my desire to flee. What was (I believe) intended as a trenchant commentary on power, empowerment, and male-female relations instead struck me as a mean-spirited, dark and ultimately pointless exercise.

Perhaps if I were more familiar with the subjects of the film -- rich, bored, disaffected boarding school girls -- it would be more poignant for me. But I'm not a rich, bored, disaffected boarding school girl (nor do I think I ever shall be), just a film enthusiast with the ability to empathize with characters on screen if given half a chance. I ended up not caring two squirts what happened to any of these characters, and the vague message of the movie regarding the validity of the culture which produces rich, bored, disaffected etc. -- one of the characters tells her little sister "I don't want you to end up like mom" -- was insufficient reason to care about the film itself.

This film obviously comes from a very personal space, as many films which are written and directed by the same person do. Just as obviously, the director had it in the back of her mind that this film become a cult favorite -- the wild makeup is otherwise largely pointless.

An ardent feminist might claim that the source of my discomfort comes from receiving the barbs directed at self-serving men. To which I say pish. *And* tosh. The characters are empty on both sides of the sexual divide. I am a feminist (a humanist!) myself, and I feel this movie makes no contribution to insight regarding the opposite sex, and is in fact so confused and hostile that it can actually cause greater problems. My wife felt the same way.

Midway through the film, my wife and I debated whether or not to see it through; we decided to reach the bitter end, to see if *any* redemption was offered. But we also discussed what movie we should watch afterward, to take the taste of "The Smokers" out of our mouths. Something cheerier, like "Apocalypse Now".

And I found myself thinking of Kurtz's penned message: "Drop the bombs. Exterminate them all."

The horror. The horror...

don't bother renting it!!! despite the fact that there was a female director, this movie seemed more like male fantasy masquerading as female fantasy. the premise of the movie is basically, "what happens when you give hot chicks who love sex guns?" the whiny statement which the movie is trying to make is "you don't know what it's like to be a girl!!!"

well, i do know what it's like, and i think it's pathetic that these girls pretend to be feminists when they define themselves by how many guys they've slept with or what sorts of guys they've slept with. they feel powerful because they're wielding guns, but they're weak without them. these ladies deserve our pity!!! no, wait, they don't even deserve our attention!!!