Digitally restored version of ‘Breakfast of Champions’ set to hit cinemas

Posted On October 25, 2024October 25, 2024

Marking the 25th anniversary of its initial release, Breakfast of Champions, the film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1973 novel, has been digitally restored in 4K and is set for limited theatrical re-release on November 1st.

The film is part of the considerable output of director and screenwriter Alan Rudolph, best known for the biographical drama Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle, Oscar-nominated Afterglow, and the political documentary Return Engagement.

Rudolph is an indie filmmaker with a distinctly offbeat style, consistently more popular with critics than with audiences. He is also popular with actors; even his less successful movies tend to have an impressive cast, and Breakfast of Champions is no exception, featuring Nick Nolte, Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Omar Epps, and a stellar supporting cast including a cameo by Vonnegut himself.

The film tells the slightly absurdist story of Dwayne Hoover, portrayed by Willis, a successful car dealer and the pre-eminent citizen of his mid-American town, who is suffering from depression and disturbing delusions. Secondary plots include the adventures of Kilgore Trout, played by Albert Finney, a gruff, cynical, and spectacularly unsuccessful science fiction writer.

The two characters meet when an eccentric billionaire discovers Kilgore Trout’s writing and invites him to speak at a local event. Trout’s arduous trip is as grim as it is funny, and his warm welcome by the staff of his one and only fan a startling experience. From here, the plot becomes more chaotic as the main characters’ peculiarities impact people and situations around them, uncovering secrets and turning everything into reformative chaos.

The film’s most obvious strong point is the confident, uninhibited acting, even by the minor players. The wildly farcical approach works for the unusual story, and the set design, which either broadly caricatures conventional American life or exaggerates departures from it, seems to fit as well. The screwball comedy approach is unpredictable and entertaining. Where the effort falls flat is in trying to adapt the original material.

Admittedly, this is a challenge. One of Vonnegut’s later works, Galapagos, refers to a writer whose books will certainly never be adapted to film because he tends to write scenes which simply will not work in a movie. This describes many, if not most, of Vonnegut’s novels.

Breakfast of Champions, the novel, is an eccentric, disjointed tale in which the plot is very much secondary to the author’s digressions and running commentary, often inserting himself into the book. The actual story is merely the framework supporting the author’s wry commentary on contemporary American life as if the real story were hidden between the lines. Unfortunately, this approach is all but impossible to get across through a different medium; the plot is the entire basis of the film adaptation, leaving most of the actual novel and its meta qualities behind as a result.

The movie adaptation is not a failure as entertainment by any means, but as a retelling of a respected novel, it falls short, working best as a visual commentary on an already familiar work of fiction.

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