Breakfast of Champions

Although Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five was successfully adapted for the big screen, the same can't be said for Breakfast of Champions. The notoriously hit-or-miss Alan Rudolph (Choose Me, Love at Large) has gamely tried to capture the novel's zany lampoonery, but it comes off like a gratingly over-the-top live-action (and sometimes animated) cartoon. A frantic Bruce Willis, sporting a low-parted toupee (or is it just a hideous comb-over?) stars as Dwayne Hoover, the garishly hucksterish car dealer of Midland City; an apoplectic Nick Nolte is top salesman Harry LeSabre, a crossdresser who's afraid his secret will get out; and a relatively restrained Albert Finney plays sci-fi writer Kilgore Trout, who's in town for an arts festival--and a fateful encounter. Rudolph raises quirkiness to new heights in this almost unwatchable exercise. (The sight of Nolte in a not-so-little red dress is a hoot, though.) The cinematic equivalent of Wheaties this ain't. (T. Rich)