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

All the buoyant lunacy of T. Coraghessan Boyle's lively novel about hucksterism, gumption, and life at a turn-of-the-century sanatorium run by cornflake king Dr. John Harvey Kellogg has been processed out of Alan Parker's earnest adaptation. And what you're left with is a lot of talk about bowel movements. Why does everyone strain so hard? Anthony Hopkins labors as the eccentric Kellogg; John Cusack nearly has a hernia emoting as a would-be breakfast-food manufacturer; Dana Carvey plays Kellogg's dissolute adopted son like a vaudeville comedian; and Matthew Broderick and Bridget Fonda look dazed and dyspeptic in the central roles of well-to-do guests. C-