The Road to Wellville

Plot synopsis:
The book's plot details three narratives which take place between November 1907 and late May 1908 in John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek, Michigan sanitarium. The first thread concerns Will and Eleanor Lightbody. Eleanor, a fan of Dr. Kellogg, drags Will to Kellogg's sanitarium. Will has recently suffered stomach pains and is still recovering from bouts of alcohol and drug addiction—the latter at the hands of his wife. Eleanor suffered a brutal miscarriage, which has left her physically weak. Hoping to improve his marriage, Will goes along but is constantly filled with doubts about Kellogg's health methods. While he takes part in the therapy, he gags at health food, does not enjoy the laughing therapy, and watches as his friend Homer Praetz is electrocuted during a sinusoidal bath. Meanwhile, his wife Eleanor finds too much enjoyment at the sanitarium, especially at the hands of Dr. Spitzvogel, a doctor who practices Die Handhabung Therapeutik—or in common parlance, erotic massage.
Charlie Ossining, a peripatetic merchant attempts to market a new type of cereal, Per-Fo, with a partner Bender, whose slick and untrustworthy behavior disarms him. They join forces with George Kellogg, adopted son of John Harvey Kellogg, who has had a falling out with his father and seeks revenge. George agrees to use his name on Per-Fo in the hopes the cereal will be bought out by the Kellogg's Company.
John Harvey Kellogg, a doctor fond of health food and what would now be called alternative medicine, inserts himself into the life of each character, whether as health guru to Eleanor, competitor to Charlie and Bender, or torturer of Will. His attempts at untested health cures, such as radium treatments, are comically tragic. As the sanitarium unravels, and son George becomes increasingly angry, father and "master of all" John must assert his control and keep his institution afloat.

Tags: sci-fi, satire, philosophical, historical fiction

Review:
As for those who thought the movie was crude and disgusting, what did you expect from a comedy set in a turn-of-the-century health sanitorium run by a well meaning but eccentric doctor?
Such a movie is bound to contain scenes of patients vomiting, getting enemas, and having a sexual tryst or two, just as undoubtedly occurred in many health sanitoriums at that time.
Finally, for those who complain that the movie wasn't historically accurate about Dr. Kellogg's actual methods (such as his character's use of electric-powered machines for health therapy), the movie was a comedy, not a biography!
Some people should take Sargeant Hulka's ("Stripes") advice and "lighten up." Good comedy is not dependent on plot or historical accuracy to be entertaining; all that matters is that it's funny, and Wellville was one of the funniest comedies I've ever seen..
Coraghessan Boyle's book into a hilarious comedy that evidently, judging from some of the comments to this forum, is not a crowd pleaser, yet, the film rewards those with an open mind to enjoy this hysterical take of a mad scientist, a spa, and the people that tend to patronize those places.The story about the use of cereals, championed by Dr. John Henry Kellogg, is the basis of the story.
This revolutionary doctor's methods were amazing in the way they were applied to patients going for the cure of their bad stomachs caused by the prevailing eating habits of the time.This farce is great fun because of the cast assembled for the movie.
We have to look hard into this mad man to realize the transformation Mr. Hopkins achieves with his character.John Cusack, as the enterprising Charles Ossining, travels to Battle Creek, Michigan in search of riches, trying to capitalize on the cereal craze.
Lara Flynn Boyle, Camryn Manheim, Traci Lind, John Neville, Dana Carvey, Colm Meany and Jacob Reynolds are all good in their small roles.This film, with its different kind of humor, will make anyone laugh..
I'm beginning to think that the general movie-viewing public has become too generic in their tastes, and don't have an appreciation for throwback oddball comedies such as The Road to Wellville.
I've always liked John Cusack and Matthew Broderick, so having them together in a movie such as this was a treat.
The health regimens practiced at the B.C. Sanitarium led to a host of other health-related businesses in Battle Creek which made everything from dubious exercise equipment to nearly tasteless all-veggie soybean burgers.This film is a lively, tongue-in-cheek rendition of the intriguing story about an era when entrepreneurship in the U.S. was at its peak.
The cast, featuring Matthew Broderick, John Cusack, Bridget Fonda and Dana Carvey, is excellent and the humor as wacky as it gets.Bon appetit!.
Anthony Hopkins, John Cusack, Mathew Broderick, Dana Carvey and Bridgette Fonda head an excellent cast of character actors.
Of course everybody is entitled to their own opinion and taste, but in the case of "The Road to Wellville" I cannot help but to break a lance for a film that deserves a little better than what it has gotten thus far.The actors shine throughout.
Matthew Broderick has never played a more likable character since his "Ferris Bueller's Day Out", Tracy Lind and Bridget Fonda sparkle with feminine beauty and although one can tell that Anthony Hopkins was not altogether comfortable with his role, comedy being clearly not his first line of work, he makes the best of what he's given to work with.
Same goes for all the supporting cast, who are throughout quirky and likable (including Colm Meany, who has never played a slimier character), and often look, as if they had stepped out of a "Asterix"-comic-book.Before the disastrous "The Master of Disguise" technically ended his career (and, yes, later associating himself later with Adam Sandler wasn't a good idea either; not for Carvey or anybody else on this planet), you basically couldn't go wrong with Dana Carvey.
Parker seems to have aimed more in the direction of biting satire, throwing in moments of seriousness (as in the story of Fonda's dead baby or the troubled history of Kellogg with his adopted son), which seem unnecessary, out of place, almost forced.And now, more than 20 years down the "Road to Wellville", the movie has aged exceptionally well and is just as enjoyable as it was when I first saw it.
The tongue-in-cheek narrative follows the experiences of several people in and around the Battle Creek (Michigan) Sanitarium, that was operated as a health spa by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.
This is not only one of the quirkiest, bravest, and flat out funniest comedies of it's decade...it is also among the handsomest and best cast "Period Pieces".I was prepared to enjoy the film....if only for the chance to savor the enormous amount of talent involved....but I had not expected to discover that each member of the cast was at their absolute peak!
What a year Bridget Fonda had...wonderful in "It Could Happen To You"....and so heart stoppingly radiant in her period finery here!....One has to ask "What Happened?????"...She looks so ready for a HUGE career...and the past decade of film could have so used her beauty, talent, and class.
Anthony Hopkins and Dana Carvey are so unexpectedly flat out brilliant and hysterical (I will never be able to hear John Huston's voice again without thinking of Hopkin's wicked riff on it) that they seem to be operating on a plain far removed from there usual level.I could also go on for many paragraphs about the sensational supporting cast....every member of which was perfectly chosen....I have to at least mention Cameryn Manheim....who glows with such sexy charisma that she dominates every seen she appears in....So refreshing and erotic in the modern Hollywood universe of undernourished Barbie Clones.In Summation....all I have to say is sit back...savor it for two hours....think about it in comparison to almost all of this years "Blockbusters" and understand what is really wrong with Hollywood...Too many critics recognize class hen they see it...and too few audiences get a chance to discover it for themselves....HERE IT IS PEOPLE....Enjoy..
Wow, very impressive: Anthony Hopkins, John Cuscak, Matthew Broderick, Bridget Fonda, Dana Carvey, Colm Meaney, Michael Lerner, on and and on.Wrong."Bathroom humor" or discussing bowel movements, etc., didn't bother me.
What disappointed me about this film was that (1) - it simply wasn't funny and (2) the acting - mainly by Cusack - was brutal (3) the story was not put together well; just a mess.
It is disappointing, though.As for the crude humor, you make the lines funny if you're going that route or you'll just turn people off, which is what happened to this movie.
The skilled cast of this film is given little to work with as most of the plot development of Boyle's wonderful novel is tossed out in favor of enema references.
While it is still a good satire of health crazes (which are hardly a new phenomenon), the book simply had too much story to put into one movie.I was also disappointed that some of the facts were changed (Dr. Kellogg, for example, stayed fit and healthy well into his 90's) to please the anti-fitness people.
It's a great film, but not a critically acclaimed movie.Dana Carey could've had more lines, but what I want to know is what happened to the character actor who played him as a child, this kid was really great and could've been huge.
I just watched this movie because Hopkins was in it, I expected another boring Hollywood style comedy.
Despite some good production values and the performance of Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Kellogg, I thought that "The Road to Wellville" was a major embarrassment.
It does feature a great deal of nudity, but that's hardly an excuse for wasting precious natural resources like John Cusak, Anthony Hopkins, and Dana Carvey.If you want to see Cusak in a comedy, rent Grosse Point Blank.
Based on the novel by T.C. Boyle, THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE is a delightful lark of a film that wickedly spoofs the health fads of the early 1900s--and in particular those set forth by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, co-inventor of the famous Kellogg cornflake and proponent of numerous "healthful" ideas that seem calculated to make moderns squirm.The film presents a triple story line.
These include George Kellogg (Dana Carvey), who seems to live to make the life of his adoptive father Dr. Kellogg (Anthony Hopkins) unmitigated hell.The various stories are extremely entertaining as they intertwine--but most of the laughs come at Dr. Kellogg's expense as he advocates yogurt enemas, electric baths, and other bizarre treatments that seem to arise primarily from his idea that sex "is the sewer drain of a healthy body." Patients are humiliated, harassed, and harangued about their sex lives even as they remain largely ignorant of their own sexual natures, which was typical of many Americans in this era.
Broderick carries the film with tremendous charm and Fonda follows suit, but the real acting awards go to Anthony Hopkins, Dana Carvey, and a supporting cast that includes outrageously funny performances by the likes of Camryn Manheim, Traci Lind, Colm Meaney, and John Neville.
Kellogg, founder of Kellogg Co. and brother of the film's hero, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (played by Anthony Hopkins).
Overall, I recommend reading Boyle's novel over seeing this film, but I also recommend reading a serious history of the cereal industry and its antecedents before believing a word of the fictional creations in both the movie and the novel.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (Anthony Hopkins) is a little too obsessed with health, to the point where everything relates to sex.
After watching this movie, anyone is likely to feel weird about being a health-freak (although there are some good lessons about health).
Broderick and Fonda charming as always, and Boyle's character broke your heart.The old attitudes about life, death, sex and health are well parodied, not to mention the intensity of an age where being gentile, rigid, wrong and righteous all strangely blended together, were all well portrayed in a way the audience could understand and laugh at (at least for those better conditioned for puke and excrement, like those of us who grew up on "Alien" and "Predator").Far and away the greatest moments of the film are the three scenes where the battle of wills plays out between a younger Dr. John Kellogg (Anthony Hopkins) and the little George Kellogg (Jacob Reynolds).
When I heard that Road to Wellville was made into a movie, starring Hopkins and Broderick, I was very eager to see it.
An otherwise admirable cast looks like they are trying to do something with it, and might have had a good time making it, but Alan Parker just didn't know what he was doing.
One or two 'jokes' about bowel movements could be funny....two could be amusing.....but this film, dedicated to that end of the alimentary canal is about as much fun to watch as it is to receive the endless enemas it delights in bringing to our close attention.
It is about the "San," a health spa in Battle Creek operated by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.Although he does not appear in the movie, the cereal company's founder was not Dr. Kellogg (as stated in an earlier review by someone claiming to be a "historian"), but Dr. Kellogg's younger brother, Will Kieth Kellogg.I purchased and watched "The Road to Wellville" after viewing an A&E biography about the Kellogg Brothers and found many parallels between the movie and the documentary.
George (Dana Carvey) is Kellogg's disappointing adopted son who is always looking for money.This is a lot wacky turn-of-the-century health ideas.
A young couple enters (Broderick and Fonda) to seek healing of their own, while a young entrepreneur (Cusack) and a disgraced son of Kellogg (Carvey) attempt to launch their own breakfast cereal brand.A quirky & curious affair from the usually straight-laced veteran Parker, 'Wellville' boasts several enjoyable qualities.
It's all of that, and yet, no one element ever feels like the forefront of the film, with Parker more interested in seeing Broderick get pumped full of enemas and yoghurt than using it to make much of a point.
Plus, the pacing does wind down by the end, and it feels like the film could wrap up sooner than it does.That being said, I enjoyed myself a lot more on the second go around with 'Wellville', now that my expectations had been tempered.
C. Boyle's novel of the same name, The Road to Wellville tells the story of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his famous Sanitarium at Battle Creek, Michigan.
Anthony Hopkins does a bizarre, but entertaining turn as the Dr. Kellogg, and the supporting cast (including Matthew Broderick and Bridget Fonda) gamely run through the frequently scatological and sexual situations of a rather untidy script.
The humor in this movie is often sexual, but never on the low level the teenager-comedies of the last years have.See this movie, enjoy it.Anthony Hopkins alone shows, how good he is in a comedy, too.
There are no redeeming features to this film, the acting, considering the cast, is poor, Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Broderick seem almost embarrassed that they have ended up in the film.
The problem of this movie is that it has no clear plot: Should it concentrate on the Lightbodys, on Wellville-Founder Kellogg or on the story of the hospital?
I especially enjoyed the great Anthony Hopkins voicing the eccentric views of Dr. John Kellogg while defining a very strange but memorable character.Of course, the critics panned this film for the very reasons I initially loved it.
The main plot involving Matthew Broderick's bizarre medical treatments is rather entertaining, but John Cusack's subplot is neither very funny nor well-written.
If you're a fan, I recommend fast-forwarding through & watching only those scenes in which he appears, it won't make any difference to your understanding of the plot and will spare you the painful experience that is the rest of the film.A low-point in the careers of some usually talented actors: 2/10.
Any movie with Matthew Broderick, Anthony Hopkins, Dana Carvey, and John Cusack has got to be good.
The film finds comedy in the most basic body functions and also in some of the now out-dated health treatments (their is a lot of crazy stuff in this movie but is any of it more riciculous then strapping a magnet to your arm and expecting your sore wrist to improve?) The movie has many funny and thought provoking ideas and it also contains the funniest scene I've ever seen in any movie ever (I'm speaking of the dinner scene with the sickly french man)Compared to a lot of the crappy Adam Sandler films and movies based on saturday night live sketches this one is pretty good and I'm surprised it wasn't a bigger hit.
Matthew Broderick, John Cusack and Anthony Hopkins all turn in great performances, and there's good supporting work from Michael Lerner and Colm Meaney.But the movie never gels, it's just a jumbled mess of sex and toilet jokes, some of which are funny, but none of which feel at home in the movie.
The sexual humor in this movie leaves a little more to the imagination than the Eddie Murphy film, but there are a lot of gags involving the baths, and William does fantasize about women having their clothes off.
to like the movie, a good sense of humor is needed....
to like the movie, a good sense of humor is needed....
to like the movie, a good sense of humor is needed....
to like the movie, a good sense of humor is needed....
to like the movie, a good sense of humor is needed....
to like the movie, a good sense of humor is needed....
to like the movie, a good sense of humor is needed....
to like the movie, a good sense of humor is needed....
to like the movie, a good sense of humor is needed....
to like the movie, a good sense of humor is needed....
to like the movie, a good sense of humor is needed....
to like the movie, a good sense of humor is needed....
The Road to WellvilleThe key to getting fit is wearing athletic apparel everywhere you go in public.Others, like those in this dramedy, maintain exercise and diet is the key.Breakfast cereal magnate Dr. Kellogg (Anthony Hopkins) operates a wellness center in the Michigan woods where the world's wealthiest (Matthew Broderick, Bridget Fonda) come for treatment for an assortment of ailments.Surprisingly, most of the cures come from sexual and business liaisons with a hodgepodge of eccentrics (Lara Flynn Boyle, John Cusack, Dana Carvey) instead of coming from Kellogg's brand of abstinence and colon cleansing.But it's those extracurricular activities that threaten the retreat's existence.
What interests me most about this film is what might have possibly coerced such big names as Hopkins, Broderick, Carvey, Boyle, Fonda, and Cusack to make this movie.
"The Road to Wellville" satirizes the early 1900's Battle Creek, Michigan sanatorium operated by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (Hopkins) of corn flakes fame.
Matthew Broderick and Anthony Hopkins are both excellent and the film has some real laugh-out-loud moments.I am surprised (and amused) at the amount of "disgusting and revolting" type comments.
The funny lines and the possibility that maybe the good would outweigh the bad kept me watching, but it wasn't quite worth the time.I am reading T.
I really didn't need to see Lara Flynn Boyle as a sickly patient, pasty face in tow!About the only thing worth watching in this film is Anthony Hopkin's performance as Kellogg.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was pretty much as depicted in this film, a most excellent job by Anthony Hopkins.
For those wondering also nude are Traci Lind, and Lara Flynn Boyle.Michael Lerner is funny as a con man, John Cusak is also as the man just trying to make a go of it and Dana Carvey is delightful as George Kellogg.Don't expect to be moved or motivated The Road To Wellville but you should laugh a lot.