tek's rating:

The Road to Wellville (R)
Beacon Pictures; IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; Shout! Factory; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; iTunes; Vudu; YouTube

This came out in 1994, and I've always wanted to see it, but I didn't get the chance until 2022. I'm afraid I found it rather disappointing, but I'm still glad to have seen it once.

I believe this is set in the early 20th century. Anthony Hopkins plays real historical figure Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (the inventor of corn flakes), who had opened a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. Among the guests at the "San" are Eleanor Lightbody (Bridget Fonda) and her husband, Will (Matthew Broderick). Eleanor is a great believer in Kellogg's eccentric methods of making people healthy, but Will is more skeptical. (It seems to me that we see more of the methods used on men than on women, but from what we do see, I thought the methods used on men seemed more extreme.) Eleanor befriends another guest named Virginia Cranehill (Camryn Manheim), while Will befriends Endymion Hart-Jones. Will also cheats on Eleanor with a patient named Ida Muntz (Lara Flynn Boyle), and lusts after a nurse named Irene Graves. Virginia introduces Eleanor to Dr. Lionel Badger (Colm Meaney), who is a vegetarian (like Kellogg), though otherwise is very unlike Kellogg. Mainly this is because of his ideas about sex (Kellogg believes in strict abstinence, while Badger believes in free love). Eleanor is also introduced to a German doctor named Spitzvogel, who provides "therapeutic massages" of the clitoris. (Badger seems to stay at the San for awhile, which seemed strange to me since he and Kellogg didn't like each other. But guests are free to come and go from the San, which is how Eleanor was able to receive Spitzvogel's services.)

Meanwhile, a man named Charles Ossining (John Cusack) has come to Battle Creek to try to start a new business making cereal called Perfo. He has a business partner named Goodloe Bender, who is good at spending money Ossining's aunt had provided to start the business, but mostly just on his own pleasures rather than on the business. He eventually hires someone who had worked at the San, who turns out to be of no help. And Ossining has the idea of making Kellogg's estranged (and very strange) adopted son, George (Dana Carvey), a partner in the business, so that they could use the famous name "Kellogg" for their cereal. And I don't want to get into all the things that happen with that business venture, but it does eventually intersect with the goings-on at the San.

In fact a lot of stuff happens with the characters at the San that I don't want to get into. But it's all very weird, hence my putting my review under "weird movies". I wish I could think of more to say without spoiling any more details of the plot. I'm not sure whether I actually liked the movie at all or not, but I'm giving it one smiley (kinda liked) instead of a rating in the "meh" range, just because... I dunno, I guess it was sort of interesting, and I really liked the cast.


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