17-year travelogue is an assemblage of short shorts with not much to say.
Forget about romantic Parisian cafes or famous Turkish coffee houses, these tales that combine caffeine and nicotine are concerned with simple spaces. Smokers would agree that the after-dinner cigarette is the best out of all smokes and coffee drinkers would say that there is nothing like a good morning wake up call in a mug. Unfortunately, these pleasures don’t even serve as a pretext for a film with simple set-ups that sees a traditional tavern table, a couple of chairs and two or three chatterboxes involved in really awkward conversations.
Shot in familiar black & white and dating back to pre-historic Roberto Benigni, the man behind Dead Man and Night on Earth groups together a personal collection of vignettes, perhaps post-production experiments that as a whole serve the purpose of 11 conversations about nothing. Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee & Cigarettes features an eclectic mix of rock stars and actors performing as themselves in a narrative-free, improvised-like composition where boredom is king and true laughter is reserved for the final 20 minutes.
Those familiar with his filmography will connect the dots on when which talent was recruited, while there is no Johnny Depp here there are plenty of special appearances from the likes of Iggy Pop, Tom Waits all the way through to Steve Buschemi and The White Stripes. Some can act and some obviously have no clue what to do, but for the most part, they remain eccentric in design and dull on delivery. The first episodes are as bland as a pot of Folgers Crystals, the real gourmet shit comes towards the end in a memorable episode entitled Twin? featuring Steve Coogan (24 Hour Party People) and Alfred Molina (Frida) and in the offbeat Wu Tang clan meets up with the enigmatic Bill f-ing Murray (Lost in Translation).
Coffee & Cigarettes becomes such a hard watch that you end up keeping count on the continuity problems demonstrated in the amount level of the coffee in the coffee cups. Indeed, the first hour is a painful watch, not even an ingeniously creative piece featuring Cate Blanchett (Heaven) in a dual role musters enough potency to merit my entertainment dollars. But for those who don’t walk out or happen to be one hour late for the show the brew does get better. With a low batting average in the laughs department, this comes across like a student-film project-if it were any other name at the helm there’s no way that the film would have found distribution. Overall, any fan would find the idea of wickedly surreal conversations a great homage to those banal moments that everyone at some point in time ends up having.
It’s never a good sign when there is absolutely no reaction from an audience. Jarmusch fans will either have to be real patient or watch their copy of Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai from different seating arrangements. At the price of a movie these days, I’d rather spend 10 bucks on a phone call, my own pack of cigs and a stemming stirafome cup of Columbian.