What you can expect is a dialogue driven comedy that has really good cast, but it doesn't necessarily make for a great movie. It is very much a predecessor of films like Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve where there are multiple stories going on at once that all eventually intersect and mesh.Acting/Casting: 6* - The cast is full of some big names (Ben Affleck, Paul Rudd, Courtney Love, Cristina Ricci, Casey Affleck, Dave Chappelle, Jay Mohr)and they all play their roles well. No one does a stand out job, but I will admit Paul Rudd is great at being downright aggravating.Directing/Cinematography/Technical: 5.5* - For a dialogue driven comedy it is fairly entertaining, but I don't think it is extremely funny by any means. The film comes together well, but in my opinion never really has a tremendous climax.Plot/Characters: 5* - This is nothing more than a movie that follows multiple characters through their New Year's Eve and the adventures or miseries that the night takes them on. Again, it is marginally entertaining, but nothing special unless this is your thing.Entertainment Value: 5* - Unless you love one of the cast or are really into how people cope with their personal issues, then you will likely get bored with this movie at some point. It was tough for me to get through the first time, so I doubt I will be watching again in the future.My Score: 6+5.5+5+5 = 21.5/4 = 5.375 Email your thoughts to [email protected]

MPAA Rating:Rated R for strong language and sexual content Quebec Rating:G Canadian Home Video Rating:14AI saw 200 Cigarettes yesterday night.I wanted to see it.I was born in 1992 but I really like the 1980's culture.Mostly the music.I find the 80's to be the best decade for music.This film has an all star cast featuring Courtney Love,Dave Chapelle,Kate Hudson,Paul Rudd,Elvis Costello as himself,Ben Affleck and plenty of others.200 Cigarettes takes place during New Years Eve in the year 1981.There are a bunch of different people all trying to get to the same New Years party.They each cope with problems of their own during that one New Years Eve day such as relationships.200 Cigarettes is a very interesting and good film and I recommend that you watch it if you're a fan of the 1980's.

Most of the film takes place during the evening of December 31st 1981, with the last few scenes set during the morning of January 1st 1982. There is not a great deal of plot other than an account of how a group of young people spend New Year's Eve in New York. The one linking thread is that most of them are on their way to a party being given by a mutual acquaintance named Monica, although we do not see much of the actual party itself. For most of the film, in fact, the neurotic, self-pitying Monica worries that none of her friends will actually turn up- even her best friend Hilary leaves- and that she will be forced to spend the entire evening arguing about her sex life with her equally self-pitying ex-boyfriend Eric, a Scottish artist who specialises in multicoloured close-ups of the female genitalia.A number of reviewers have wondered why it was necessary to set the film in the early eighties rather than the late nineties when it was made, speculating that this may have been a device to market a nostalgic soundtrack album. Certainly, we get to hear a lot of songs from the era by artists such as Blondie, Roxy Music, Kim Carnes and Elvis Costello (who makes a brief cameo appearance)- all of which took me straight back to my own college days- although I suspect that the real reason for choosing 1981/2 was that this represented the end of the carefree, pre-AIDS era.If the film has been set in, say, 1998/9 all the bed-hopping and partner-swapping that goes on would seem a lot less innocent. This is very much a film about sex. Some of the characters are looking for love, but most of them are just looking for sex. Most of them end up with a partner, although not always the one they started the film with. Monica dumped Eric because she found him inadequate in bed, but now worries that she will be unable to find another boyfriend. Val, Monica's young country cousin from Long Island, throws herself at every man she can find, overcome by the excitement of being in the big city. Lucy, a girl even more man-hungry than Val, tries to get off with a handsome young bartender and her (hitherto platonic) flatmate Kevin, who is depressed over the failure of his own relationship. Cindy, a naive and innocent girl, has just lost her virginity to the handsome but obnoxiously conceited Jack, a young man who complains that every girl who goes to bed with him falls in love with him. (He sees that as a major problem).Cindy, in fact, is one of the few attractive characters in the film. She is terminally clumsy and accident-prone (in one of the film's grosser moments she manages to slip over and land in a pile of dog-dirt), but there is at least a certain sincerity and sweetness about the way Kate Hudson plays her. (Justice is done when Cindy ends up with sensitive punk rocker Tom, about the only likable male character on view). Most of the other characters are an unlikeable bunch, whose main vices are self-centredness, arrogance, reckless promiscuity and an even more reckless tobacco addiction. (The early eighties may have been pre-AIDS but they were certainly not pre-lung cancer). The title presumably refers to the number of cigarettes the characters smoke between them. Is this some sort of product placement for Big Tobacco? The film has certain similarities with Barry Levinson's "Diner", another nostalgic film (in that case made in the eighties about the fifties) about a group of young friends in the period leading up to New Year. Both films are episodic in character and concentrate on character rather than action. "Diner", however, is by far the better film, the main reason being that the characters in that film emerge as rounded individuals, whereas the characters in "200 Cigarettes" are little more than one-dimensional ciphers. "Diner" concentrated on only half a dozen characters; the scriptwriter of "200 Cigarettes" made the mistake of trying to interest us in nearly twenty in a film lasting just over an hour and a half. There are really no stars of this film, just a long list of big-name actors in cameo roles.The film's other main weakness is that, although it is meant to be a comedy, the script is not really witty. The running dog-dirt-on-the-back-of- someone's-coat joke may be gross, but it is about the only memorable joke in the film, even if it is memorable for the wrong reasons. It must say something about a scriptwriter's lack of imagination when you are forced to include that corny old gag "how do you like your eggs done in the morning, scrambled or fertilised?" in your list of "Memorable Quotes". The words "scraping the bottom of the barrel" come to mind. 5/10, chiefly for the music.

it just a simple movie about guys going to a party and getting it all mixed up, messed up., nice when you see how love works even when we all hide behind the smoke of your cigarette. the quest for love, for fun, for a party is very well portrayed. different characters, different situations, kind of make you feel you are in the middle of the desperation on new years eve, i think 1981 1982 was a great time to place it.the speeches and quotes and the way they develop a love and funny story is very nice. i t has a lot of characters making you crazy going from here to there on new year's eve. the humor is stool, and smart, i t has a great soundtrack, and in the end, it all turns out very well.