Wake me when it's over. . .

Rating: 2/10 (15 February 2005)

There comes a point when watching some films when you have to make a choice: which would be more interesting, this film or real life? In the case of Coffee and Cigarettes, a movie containing various small vignettes involving two or more actors and coffee and cigarettes, real life wins.
I've had bad first dates that were more interesting than the conversations I witnessed in this movie. Which is too bad, really, because the premise seemed promising enough: pick a universal theme (in this case coffee and cigarettes) and then have different actors sit down in a diner/coffee shop and make that theme the link. See what they discover. I'm all for plot-free, slice-of-life films, and Jarmusch is the undisputed master of letting life reveal itself in the little moments lived out in the forgotten parts of dying Americana (like a squalid diner). In the past, his movies and their characters try to make sense of their squalid lives as they inhabit some mythic, urban space leftover from the earlier part of the 20th century. In his movies there are no strip malls, fast food chains, mass market food, or corporate takeovers. No Taco Bells or paint by the numbers plots. In the past, his films all ended up effortlessly revealing something small but vital about the characters or life itself. Even in his comedies, Jarmusch took his characters seriously, and as a result we cared about them.
But not this time. The situations and the acting in this film are so contrived, stilted, and uneven that they reveal nothing. Mercifully, none of the segments is too long, but if none of the segments really works, that's cold comfort. Now, I don't know how much of this movie was improv or how much was scripted, but I don't think that really matters. It just doesn't work.
This film was like bad modern art: it claims to deserve our attention merely because it's there.
Some who watch this movie may be tempted to convince themselves that they liked it because it is cool to like everything Jim Jarmusch. They do themselves a disservice. No filmmaker is so cool that even their failed efforts deserve unqualified praise.