A timely subject of satire -- diets, aerobics, colonics, the entire health racket -- but set at the turn of the century so as to broaden the targets. And at the same time inoffensively isolate them. Alan Parker, working from a novel by T. Coraghessan Boyle, lends his always heavy directorial hand to the proceedings. Rachel Portman needlessly underlines the mirth with oom-pah-pah background music. And the players -- Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Broderick, Bridget Fonda, John Cusack, Michael Lerner, Dana Carvey, Lara Flynn Boyle, Traci Lind -- are so overcranked as to seem to be reading their lines phonetically in an unfamiliar tongue. Worst offender: Hopkins, wearing Jerry Lewis's Nutty Professor dentures and sounding like the ghost of John Huston. But it would be fairer to think of him and the others as victims rather than offenders. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd
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