The Road to Wellville

**_Satire about the health fads of early 1900s’ America_** This is a sophisticated blend of dark humor and documented historical material covering the excessive obsession with wellness of those with the means and time to blow on it. The era involves the late Victorian Age and, specifically, clean-living advocate John Harvey Kellogg (played by Anthony Hopkins) and his crackpot methods employed at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in south-central Michigan. Yet the material is relevant to those today preoccupied with pseudo-scientific quackeries. Think of rigid vegans, PETA zealots, green energy fanatics, and fitness freaks who one-dimensionally harp on their particular obsession. Most of those things are fine if balanced by a sense of moderation, but when people become religious about them they end up bullheaded, irritating and even destructive. The best thing about this costly production are the outstanding sets, costumes and locations, followed by Hopkin’s knock-it-out-of-the-ballpark performance and the great cast in general. Speaking of which, the cast includes Matthew Broderick, Bridget Fonda, Dana Carvey, John Cusack, Traci Lind, Lara Flynn Boyle and Michael Lerner, amongst a few others. Unfortunately, the flick’s overlong by at least a half hour and so the amusing proceedings get tedious. The constant scatological bits and focus on what Seinfeld called ‘bad naked’ don’t help. It runs 1h 55m and was shot in 1993 (and early 1994) at the Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York, which is located 80 miles north of Manhattan, as well as Orton Plantation at Winnabow in southeast North Carolina, and the nearby city of Wilmington. GRADE: B-