Mr Black I usually enjoy most movies, but this was a real hard one to get through. For starters, it's New Years Eve in New York - Yes, December 31, - and yet there's a guy riding a motorcycle, there's no snow at all, and everyone is dressed like it's September. Now to the story. Wow, is this bad. I understand where they were trying to go with this but seriously, huge fail. I'm pretty sure the audition for everyone in this movie went something like "So, can you chain smoke cigarettes, because you'll be puffing on one every two seconds for the entire movie! The characters and lude and crude, with absolutely no redeeming qualities in any of them. The worst part was Gaby Hoffman and Christina Ricci. Seriously? Take the two girls who have already appeared together, dress them in ridiculous costumes and try using cheesy and phony New York accents that are so over the top it's ridiculous. Oh, and also, ,big sideburns were NOT in fashion in 1982. Maybe in 72,, but not ten years later. Wow. What a dog.

picturetaker I've had this movie with my big box of tapes for the last 7 years. I think I remember buying it for a buck at a dollar store years back but never opened it or watched it. Finally, being bored and laid-off from work I decided to check out my old tapes. Its amazing what I found in my box of tapes, some awesome forgotten movies that are likely not even on DVD or blueray. This 200 Cigarettes is not one of them.I've seen a lot of movies in my life. Good ones and bad ones and 200 Cigarettes is one of the worst ones I ever saw. Its amazing that just a few years after this movie was made by MTV you get gems like "election" and "Napolean Dynamite" but MTV just pays the bills I guess, because we also get garbage like "200 Cigarettes" and "Freddy got fingered" too.This movie doesn't try to be cool, it just expects it. Its not cool. Its a waste of film simply because it basically swears too much for the sake of swearing in a movie, has stupid sex talk through out and has some of the worst acting I have ever seen by some actors that can apparently act. The best actor in the movie was the girl from Goonies (Martha Plimpton) that tells Bran in that movie "Bran uh, God put that rock there for a purpose and I don't think you should be moving it.". Goonies was a good movie. 200 Cigarettes was not. Simple? Rate this review helpful because now you want watch the Goonies again, don't you?

Mr_Censored It's New Year's Eve 1981. There's a party, and seemingly everyone is invited. Story lines inter-mingle with one another as fate twists and turns for a colorful assortment of characters on their way to the party. Humiliation, depression, sexual inadequacy, selfishness and love – all fodder for "200 Cigarettes." There's a lot going on in "200 Cigarettes" with countless story lines to accommodate its extensive cast. Everyone from Ben Affleck to Janeane Garofalo and Dave Chappelle to Christina Ricci shows up for this party and many memorable characters are molded. A still-on-the-cusp-of-fame Dave Chappelle sticks out the most as the smooth talking, marijuana-smoking cabbie who seems to know all the right things to say. Paul Rudd mopes around in a typically self-loathing character, but is actually likable in one of his most over-looked roles. Martha Plimpton – as the hostess of said party – plays a nut-job with sincerity, while Ben Affleck…well, Ben Affleck isn't given much to do, and you're bound to have a few laughs at his character's expense. Director Risa Bramon Garcia's only film to date captures the party atmosphere and its era perfectly, as the film is fun and truly feels like stepping into a timewarp. This is pure fluff, but there's nothing wrong with that. Anyone willing to get lost in some 80's nostalgia and who can appreciate a young and talented cast will enjoy a drag off of "200 Cigarettes." Heck, any film that can make Courtney Love seem likable can't be all that bad, can it?

James Hitchcock 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.