The Smokers

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

What was up with this film? I thought I was in for an edgy, interesting film. What I got was a montage of bad acting and even worse directing/writing. It just baffled me who would watch this movie and think it was good. The acting was so overdone. The camera work looked like the actors themselves shot it, heck - they may have done better! The plot was supposed to be in your face, it was just dumb. The fire scene looked like a skit from Saturday Night Live it was so unbelievably awful. These girls need to take some more acting lessons, or better yet - get a new agent or fire whoever suggested these parts to them. RUN FROM THIS MOVIE!!! RUN FAR, FAR AWAY!!!!!!!

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...

"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)

This really is as bad as people have commented. I thought anything would be at least watchable with Dominique and Thora in it, but I was wrong. Absolute, jaw-dropping, unbelievably bad performances from everyone involved, in wildly distracting outfits and makeup. And I like the actresses - in other movies. I liked Lolita, American Beauty, Ghost World. What happened?

Thankfully, it has been a little while since I saw it and it is starting to fade from my memory.

The plot, which was hard to determine, was plain silly. Since when does a tile bathroom go up in flames from a Bic lighter? Oh yeah, at the end of this crap.