The Smokers

"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)

I wish I had checked the IMDB reviews for this movie before renting it.

Don't be fooled by the reasonably interesting summary on the back of the box, this is one of the worst films I have ever sat through. The acting is laughable, with lines being delivered in a horribly stilted, mechanical style by all but one actor (excepting Thora Birch, who only has about ten minutes of screen time). Of course, you can't fault the actors for having to deliver lines that are horribly cliched or needlessly dramatic. Finally, it appears to have been edited by fairly intelligent chimps, with massive skips in the story leaving you trying desperately to figure out what's going on. The last ten minutes are among the worst ever commited to celluloid in movie that is trying to take itself seriously.

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!!!

I rented this in hopes of seeing, at the least, a film with some memorable lines or fun moments, and hoped that possibly I was stumbling across an underrated, obscure gem. I didn't even get any memorable lines or fun moments. It seems that what the film is trying to do is show a feminist view of sex, but the viewpoint doesn't go very deep or really seem that intriguing. It hardly even makes sense. The characters don't do much to support this attempt at deepness, and the acting is lousy all around. One of the main girls is trying her best to be an Angelina Jolie type, but she has zero charisma or screen presence. I think the best acting in the film was from a minor female character in a bar that one of the male characters was trying to pick up, and she had about three lines. Seriously, the acting is that noticeably bad. Thora Birch must be trying to earn indie cred by appearing in this right around the time her career was taking off, and she does have one of the better moments towards the beginning involving playing a Russian roulette-type game with an almost completely loaded gun, but the fact that the gun is loaded is the only fascinating part about this scene because her acting isn't particularly stellar. Dominique Swain doesn't even shine at all, and she has definitely saved some films I've seen in the past. The pot smoking seemed like a gimmick tacked onto the film. It's a shame. This movie looks good on paper, but suffers from weakness factoring in from all aspects that go into the making of it.

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...