Movie Review: 'The Road to Wellville' (1994)

All the buoyant lunacy of T. Coraghessan Boyle's virtuoso storytelling style has been processed out of this earnest adaptation of his novel about fads, hucksterism, and turn-of-the-century entrepreneurial gumption at the Battle Creek sanatorium of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg — as in cornflakes. What you're left with in the Wellville of Alan Parker (Mississippi Burning) is a lot of talk about bowel movements. Believe me, a lot of talk. Everyone strains so terribly hard! No one has any fun! Anthony Hopkins labors at Kellogg's eccentricity through a set of Bugs Bunny teeth; John Cusack, so relaxed in Bullets Over Broadway, nearly has a hernia emoting as would-be breakfast-food manufacturer Charles Ossining; Dana Carvey plays Kellogg's filthy, dissolute adopted son, George, like a vaudeville comedian; and Matthew Broderick and Bridget Fonda, unable to get a purchase on the central roles of Battle Creek guests Will and Eleanor Lightbody, count on the production's elaborate costumes and health-care contraptions to endow them with identities. The cast is rich with talent. The soup at this sanatorium, however, is thin. C-