Smoking Causes Coughing

Five vigilantes dressed in blue who can invoke, death, destruction from the compounds in their smoke, Mercury and Nicotine, Ammonia, Methanol - Benzene, plus a rat who dribbles green, you wouldn't stroke (unless you were an attractive young lady with a fetish for vermin, they do exist apparently!). Sent away to come together and prepare, revealing stories leaving eyebrows in the air, hats that change wearers perception, machinery of misconception, defective robots lead to anguish, gloom, despair. Then Lézardin decides to stub earth's light, extinguishing a planet with his clout, can Tobacco Force exhale, create a cancer to avail, getting hooked into a cycle, with no way out.

Quentin Duplex wrote the very weird, 'Deerskin', which I did enjoy. And this is just as crazy as that. I admit the trailer for this, is very bad, and really does not do the film justice, as it's entertaining, and is short too. It certainly earns its rating for violence and gore, buckets of blood, monsters get killed, and the stories that are shared during the movie and the whole film story itself, is bizarre, funny and quite mad.

The story is about a sort of super hero group with names about smoking, it's metaphoric in nature, but their actions are not. The five key players are very likeable and written well, the production design, costumes and whole look is 1970's Japanese Kaiju movies / Power Rangers rip off / homage, done crazily. But it works, just, thanks to the short run time and performances too.

Some great effects that are done real well, and used sparingly, and the tone is not to be taken seriously, which you can't, and that's the point. 6/10 for this, just not enough for a 7. A limited release and audience for this one, if you can find it. The ending is just as nuts as 'Deerskin'.

One thing that movie fans can say unequivocally about French cinephiles is that they often possess a love of absurdist humor, both in the films they watch and in the pictures their countrymen make. That's been verified once again in writer-director Quentin Dupieux's latest, a wacky, wigged out sci-fi/fantasy comedy that's truly one of a kind. The film follows the campy exploits of the Tobacco Force, a Power Ranger-like troupe of superheroes who take on cheesy-looking monsters and villains with their martial arts skills, as well as their ability to emit toxic chemicals (like nicotine) in ample quantities to quickly vanquish their foes. However, in the wake of their latest successful mission, their commander (a randy lookalike cousin of TV's lovable alien Alf) orders them to go on retreat to work on their team building skills to compensate for a recent tendency toward too much individualism. And, once there, they work on their bonding by spending much of their time telling stories - truly bizarre ones - that have nothing to do with them or their mission. In turn, these assorted vignettes essentially make up the bulk of the film. Viewers (myself included) might wonder why the picture is constructed in such a way, given that it plays more like a collection of bits loosely strung together by a thin central narrative. But that didn't stop me from laughing, though - and quite a lot at that. From the standpoint of a movie that has a solid, well-crafted story, "Smoking Causes Coughing" fails miserably. But, as one that tickles the funny bone, the picture hits a string of home runs. Yes, it's silly and nonsensical, and it's far from epic filmmaking, However, as something that evokes huge chuckles for their own sake, this one is hard to beat. So, as long as you don't go in expecting auteur-grade cinema, you'll be fine if you accept this one just for what it is - a vehicle for making us laugh at a time when we can really use it most.

Quentin Dupieux never seems to make a conventional movie, and for that, I love him. The bizarre imageries of his imagination makes me curiously wonder what his daily thought process is. For Cigarettes Causes Coughing, it's yet another subversive trek that will leave you confused and wanting more explanation.

The American advertising made this look like a weird take on Marvel movies, but as usual, it morphed into something else entirely. We have a superhero group that is in malaise, breaking due to other conditions of the typical human experience. Jealousy, selfishness, family obligations and so forth are making them ineffective in the field. So what is needed? A group retreat.

But we don't see any real hashing out of emotions or team building per se, it's mostly just existential dread and stories about the inevitability of death. It's always a tough sledding to figure out what Dupieux is trying to convey, simply because his version of reality is rarely coherent. Amidst the washed out color of the worlds he creates, he leaves all meaning for the viewer to decide. What would happen if Nick Fury was in the middle of a love triangle with Black Widow and Captain Marvel? It's one of those weird scenarios that I am sure Dupieux thinks of while sipping his cognac.

The trick to watching these types of meaning is to understand there might not be one, or it might require some reading to figure it out. On the other hand, they sure are strange and entertaining anti-film.

What two people find funny isn't going to be the same thing and this comedy is going to be hilarious for you or unbearable. I found it to be the former.

To like this movie you need to enjoy these types of shows: B-Movies like The Room or Troll 2, Black Mirror, Rick and Morty, Garth Marenghi's Dark Place, etc... If you go in looking for this movie to teach you something or 'make sense' then I'd recommend seeing something else, but if you're a goofy guy like me and would laugh at a robot killing itself by driving into a lake or Power Rangers named after cigarette ingredients high fiving for 5 mins while covered in the guts of a turquoise that they gave cancer to then you're in for a treat.

On a technical note while this moving is dripping in B-movie tropes it still manages to have an excellent cast that all are memorable in some capacity and filmed with great shots in beautifully rich colour.