A giant tobacco company offers the small town of Eagle Rock, Iowa $25M if all 4,006 residents can give up smoking for 30 days.
With that kind of premise, you already know that Cold Turkey is going to be a super-broad satire movie, one that you really have to be in the mood to watch.
Directed by Norman Lear, all characters are one-dimensional and the themes are obvious, but that doesn’t matter. That the topic of the movie is smoking feels almost quaint and warm. Remember those days?
Of course, it’s not really about smoking; it’s really about avarice, smallmindedness, the voraciousness of Big Tobacco, the radical Right, and so on.
Watch it for standout performances from Graham Jarvis, as the power-hungry leader of the ultra-right Christopher Mott Society. He’s not interested in policing the event until he asks if he can wear a cap and an armband. Cold Turkey is worth watching just for Graham Jarvis:
Pippa Scott is the twitchy, put-upon wife of minister Dick Van Dyke:
Bob Newhart is the evil mastermind behind the whole scheme:
Barbara Cason:
It’s an uneven, imbalanced movie. At one point, Bob Newhart realizes that it’s time to subvert the whole operation because it’s going too well. You’re expecting many delicious scenes of subversion. But nothing happens.
Plus, the movie takes so long to get started. There is so much comedic potential in the movie that could be mined, yet the heavy front end sucks up precious minutes of the movie’s 100-minute run-time.
Cold Turkey is worth watching, if anything, for its fantastic character set-pieces.
