Cold Turkey (1971)

Merwin Wren (Bob Newhart) comes up with a plan to remake the image of Hiram Grayson tobacco magnate in the same way as the Nobel Prize has rehabilitated the image of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. They offer $25 million to any American town that quits smoking for 30 days. Eagle Rock, Iowa is a small crumbling town with many churches but not enough work after the military base closed. Rev. Clayton Brooks (Dick Van Dyke) is one of the town leaders. They hope to attract a new defense facility but they need to clean up the town. Brooks rallies the town to give up smoking. However it gets even tougher as the tobacco company does everything to push the people to smoke.This is Norman Lear's movie. He created some of the most iconic popular TV shows of the 70s and early 80s. There are a lot of TV stars and future stars. The movie feels very quaint for it. It definitely has the lower class everyday people humor with his sense of social commentary. It also features a pretty lovely Randy Newman song. I just wish it was funnier. I also didn't care for the comedic montages. The movie seems more interested in the social commentary although the doctor in the operating room is very funny.

This movie isn't at all what I expected. I thought it would be much more predictable, more cartoonish, or childish, like "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World." Certainly there's a lot of slapstick, and a lot of the references and jokes are dated - but, for the most part, this movie stands up to the test of time, and is skewering so much more than the tobacco industry: the self-righteous Joel-Osteen-like preacher, the Tea-Party-like Christopher Mott Society, the product tie-ins to the city's stunt, the resulting media circus, the attempts by the town to make money off their stunt, the anti-capitalist protesters (Occupy Eagle Rock?), the armed militia, the corporate villains afraid of the movement, the new age guru… it's all here, just like now. This a darkly hilarious, searing, indictment of misplaced American values, most of which we're still embracing today. If you are going to watch, keep in mind that this is a very visual movie - most of the laughs, and the satire, come from what you are seeing, not what's being said, so you have to watch (no multi-tasking!). It's also a movie worth watching only on a channel that won't cut any of the very adult language. The almost-silent Pippa Scott almost steals the film, IMO - she's brilliant, as is her character. Second comes Judith Lowry as the gun-toting Odie. There's only one thing I don't like about the movie: Bob Newhart. He's more creepy than funny, which I didn't think was possible (I'm a big fan).

I watched this film several times on television before I finally came to love it. I have come to measure films on their own terms, not necessarily my idealized ones. The movie is extravagantly playful with polemical outbursts and subtle undertone as well. The image of the town doctor with a pacifier is, perhaps, my favourite icon, a simple, silly, but funny one. How being on the cover of a national news magazine trumps realization by the pastor of how shallow the town is a lovely motif. I liked the pastor's desire to serve in Dearborn, Michigan as a desirable goal. I think that Pippa Scott's character defines the reality behind the story. Her pastor's wife is a fine work. Again, this is a movie I did not see when it was first released and would not have seen. That was my loss; for what it is, this is fine entertainment. Tgibbs279 gets this one right on target.

This is the strongest - and most vicious - satire on the American "way of life" ever filmed. Although the Vietnam War was still going on - and still the focus of national attention - director Lear wisely avoids any mention of it, and thus any use of it for political purposes; he chooses instead to concentrate on how Americans of that period saw themselves - in other words, what most Americans thought was good about America, not any of the "social issues" that were dividing the country at the time.Well, but what is this "good about America" that the film lampoons so unrelentingly? Most Americans think they have a religion - even though their ministers prefer showing up on the cover of Time magazine to living a good life. Most Americans believe TV newscasters keep them informed, even though they know that those people are just entertainers, really, reading script written out for them, that may or may not actually have something to do with current events. Americans want to believe that they are politically committed to some important cause or other - but they can get hysterical over matters as trivial as someone lighting up a cigarette.The fact is, American morality is just a big balloon - it looks impressive but it's all hot air.I should point out that satire can frequently be put to use to help with the improvement of social life, by pointing out attitudes that need changing - and, balancing this film off against Lear's television shows, there's little doubt that such is the case here. If the film still seems vicious - and it does - it's because Americans haven't yet stopped to think through the consequences of their attitudes - such as the thousands dead in Iraq, or the continuing misery of the poor.I certainly hope the day will come when I can look back at Cold Turkey as a relic of the past, with nothing more to say. Sadly, that is not yet the case. America still looks and sounds pretty much like this today, and so the satire remains as potent as when this film first came out.Oh, yes, and it is also VERY funny.