CINEMA: Stanley Peskin
IF the subject matter of Alan Parker’s The Road to Wellville is Hitchcockian in its obsession with food and sex, the manner of the film is closer to Mack Sennett and The Keystone Cops, with injections of Dickensian types and humour. The film is not unlike a period musical comedy, but without setpiece songs and dances.
In the main plot, a married couple, Will and Eleanor Lightbody (drolly played by Matthew Broderick and Bridget Fonda), come to the Battle Creek Sanitarium, run by Dr John Harvey Kellogg (Anthony Hopkins), in the hope of bringing some equilibrium into their marriage.
In the sub-plot, George Kellogg (Dana Carvey), an estranged adopted son, assists Charles Ossining (John Cusack) and Goodloe Bender (Michael Lerner in a very plush performance) in their attempt to rival Kellogg’s business by manufacturing Per-Fo cornflakes, a product even pigs refuse to eat.
The time is 1907, the rural setting an idyllic representation of the American Dream of health, prosperity and immortality. But, as Bender cynically and accurately remarks, ”Health is the open sesame to the sucker’s purse,” and indeed the Temple of Health is no more than the Temple of Mammon. The dream of a transcendental world yields to crass materialism.
There is nearly always a vulgar element in Parker’s work and it is not surprising that he should relish either the lavatorial jokes or the juxtaposition of the proper inmates of the San carefully chewing or ”Fletcherising” cereals and salads with shots of Battle Creek residents enjoying juicy steaks and succulent oysters — albeit drenched in their own urine — at the local pub.
The diet at the San may be strictly vegetarian, but the dialogue and action of the film are sexually rampant. There are many corny and sometimes witty references to flatulence and mastication. ”An erection” is described as ”the flagpole on your grave” and the inmates are advised to ”exonerate one’s bowels”.
Looking like a refugee from Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man, Hopkins, whose beaver-like teeth are modelled on Teddy Roosevelt and Bugs Bunny, is sterile and has adopted 39 children. His dialogue is an entertaining mix of biblical discourse and Mississippi vernacular.
One of the San inmates, Virginia Cranehill (charmingly played by Camryn Manheim), expounds cheerfully on the ”pleasure of the leather saddle between one’s legs”. And Will’s visions of naked women and his experiments with a penis manipulator result in a number of amusing and not so amusing sexual adventures.
The design is visually beguiling in its evocation of Battle Creek as the Cereal Bowl of the World. The jaunty music, which includes laughing songs, Christmas carols and elegant waltzes, is employed with appealing irony and is quite delightful.