200 Cigarettes (1999)

A collection of twenty somethings try to cope with relationships, loneliness, desire and their individual neuroses. 200 Cigarettes stars an all star cast of famous talented people such as Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Christina Ricci and Paul Rudd. I loved all the characters and i found them hilarious and the soundtrack was pretty awesome sure it's by no means the best movie that any of this actors starred but they all did a nice job and i can't really think anything bad about the movie and it was pretty hilarious how 3 girls wanted to screw the Barman played by Ben Affleck or Kate Hudson falling down the street upon dog poo and that's why i give 200 Cigarettes 2 Thumbs Up.

There is so much more than meets the eye here. This was the first time I saw Casey Affleck, and I thought 'This guy CRAPS on his brother for acting'. I've not been disappointed since... his turn in Jesse James was outstanding.I adore Martha Plimpton, and can (of course) understand the character's obsession with EC.This film has worked it's way into our family 'language'. 'Ronkonkoma' in a heavy NY accent features largely... as does 'I want to lick his glasses'.There is so much to love about this film. It's cheesy and not cheesy, all at the same time, and it's the little things that make it.There is a great deal to read between the lines, and so if you don't like subtle complexity in your films, then perhaps this wouldn't be for you.

this is one of my all-time favorite movies; as evidenced by my review history, I am not a compulsive reviewer, but decided that if one more movie deserves my shout-out it is this low-profile and vastly underrated effort so I dredged up my registration information which I hadn't used in years; I remember stumbling upon the movie at my local home video rental store nine years ago; I immediately fell in love with this star-jammed vehicle that effortlessly manages to be stridently observant and yet retain a light and joyfully irrelevant touch; some of the reviewers complain that its crowded story-lines don't allow for fully-fledged characters but fail to see that it's one of the successful wink-wink aspects of the movie: most of the protagonists ARE fully-fledged, it's just that there just so much to their character! They are either shallow/vapid people or one-track minds desperate to score before the last hours of the old year ring out; both types can be sketched with a few confident strokes! for instance, just listening in on the bathroom conversation of Caitlin and Bridget you get all the insight into their character that you need to know perfectly well where they come from and what is their motivation; come on, given the lightweight subject matter I don't see how you can expect a 162-minute English patient-calibre backstory; you might ask then why waste time on a movie about shallow people or people obsessed with hosting the perfect party? because shallow plus zero self-awareness plus NYC art-scene types equals funny; being so caught up in party dip and New Year's decoration that it leads up to existential drama and queasiness is also hilarious in my book; and 200 cigarettes serves up just that sort of delightful cinematic entertainment; not to mention that it has one of my all-time favorite one-liners: "I DARE you to f*** me!"

Most of the film takes place during the evening of December 31st 1981, with the last few scenes set during the morning of January 1st 1982. There is not a great deal of plot other than an account of how a group of young people spend New Year's Eve in New York. The one linking thread is that most of them are on their way to a party being given by a mutual acquaintance named Monica, although we do not see much of the actual party itself. For most of the film, in fact, the neurotic, self-pitying Monica worries that none of her friends will actually turn up- even her best friend Hilary leaves- and that she will be forced to spend the entire evening arguing about her sex life with her equally self-pitying ex-boyfriend Eric, a Scottish artist who specialises in multicoloured close-ups of the female genitalia.A number of reviewers have wondered why it was necessary to set the film in the early eighties rather than the late nineties when it was made, speculating that this may have been a device to market a nostalgic soundtrack album. Certainly, we get to hear a lot of songs from the era by artists such as Blondie, Roxy Music, Kim Carnes and Elvis Costello (who makes a brief cameo appearance)- all of which took me straight back to my own college days- although I suspect that the real reason for choosing 1981/2 was that this represented the end of the carefree, pre-AIDS era.If the film has been set in, say, 1998/9 all the bed-hopping and partner-swapping that goes on would seem a lot less innocent. This is very much a film about sex. Some of the characters are looking for love, but most of them are just looking for sex. Most of them end up with a partner, although not always the one they started the film with. Monica dumped Eric because she found him inadequate in bed, but now worries that she will be unable to find another boyfriend. Val, Monica's young country cousin from Long Island, throws herself at every man she can find, overcome by the excitement of being in the big city. Lucy, a girl even more man-hungry than Val, tries to get off with a handsome young bartender and her (hitherto platonic) flatmate Kevin, who is depressed over the failure of his own relationship. Cindy, a naive and innocent girl, has just lost her virginity to the handsome but obnoxiously conceited Jack, a young man who complains that every girl who goes to bed with him falls in love with him. (He sees that as a major problem).Cindy, in fact, is one of the few attractive characters in the film. She is terminally clumsy and accident-prone (in one of the film's grosser moments she manages to slip over and land in a pile of dog-dirt), but there is at least a certain sincerity and sweetness about the way Kate Hudson plays her. (Justice is done when Cindy ends up with sensitive punk rocker Tom, about the only likable male character on view). Most of the other characters are an unlikeable bunch, whose main vices are self-centredness, arrogance, reckless promiscuity and an even more reckless tobacco addiction. (The early eighties may have been pre-AIDS but they were certainly not pre-lung cancer). The title presumably refers to the number of cigarettes the characters smoke between them. Is this some sort of product placement for Big Tobacco? The film has certain similarities with Barry Levinson's "Diner", another nostalgic film (in that case made in the eighties about the fifties) about a group of young friends in the period leading up to New Year. Both films are episodic in character and concentrate on character rather than action. "Diner", however, is by far the better film, the main reason being that the characters in that film emerge as rounded individuals, whereas the characters in "200 Cigarettes" are little more than one-dimensional ciphers. "Diner" concentrated on only half a dozen characters; the scriptwriter of "200 Cigarettes" made the mistake of trying to interest us in nearly twenty in a film lasting just over an hour and a half. There are really no stars of this film, just a long list of big-name actors in cameo roles.The film's other main weakness is that, although it is meant to be a comedy, the script is not really witty. The running dog-dirt-on-the-back-of- someone's-coat joke may be gross, but it is about the only memorable joke in the film, even if it is memorable for the wrong reasons. It must say something about a scriptwriter's lack of imagination when you are forced to include that corny old gag "how do you like your eggs done in the morning, scrambled or fertilised?" in your list of "Memorable Quotes". The words "scraping the bottom of the barrel" come to mind. 5/10, chiefly for the music.