MOVIE REVIEW : High-Colonic Hijinks on ‘The Road to Wellville’ : A solid production and strong performances can’t give this far-fetched Alan Parker farce a peg to hang its logic on.

Has America been waiting for a broad farce about bodily functions? Is there a burgeoning market for jokes about colonics and stool samples, a hoard of viewers poised to laugh at belching, excrement tossing, spitting up, throwing up, flatulence and quick cuts from enemas to dark beer flowing from a tap? “The Road to Wellville” thinks so.

Adapted and directed by Alan Parker from T. Coraghessan Boyle’s novel, “Wellville” plays like a foreign-language film without benefit of subtitles. Actors stride purposefully around a beautifully constructed environment, but the view from the seats is perplexing and disconnected.

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the real-life centerpiece of book and film, was a classic American eccentric, a health fanatic and corn flake inventor whose belief in what’s been called “muscular vegetarianism” would fit right into today’s California.

Instead, Kellogg turned the Michigan town of Battle Creek into a turn-of-the-century health mecca dominated by his sanitarium, an early version of the Canyon Ranch where celebrities like President Taft and J.C. Penney as well as ordinary folks subjected themselves to the man’s vigorous regimen, which included a not inconsiderable number of daily enemas.

For Kellogg believed that “universal constipation” was “the most destructive blockade that has ever opposed human progress.” He declared himself an enemy of “the civilized colon,” and, according to James C. Wharton’s fascinating “Crusaders for Fitness,” “personally inquired of the directors of the London and Bronx zoos how often their primates moved their bowels.”

Kellogg (played by Anthony Hopkins with the kind of misguided energy that marks the entire enterprise) was also a relentless enemy of sexuality. And “Wellville’s” opening scene shows the good doctor insisting to journalists from a Rube Goldberg exercise contraption that “sex is the sewer drain of a healthy body” and poetically denouncing masturbation as “the silent killer of the night.”

Given how bizarre the real Kellogg was, it’s unfortunate but not unexpected that writer-director Parker, never a noticeably subtle filmmaker (“Midnight Express,” “Mississippi Burning”), has chosen to overemphasize the grotesqueness, wasting no opportunity to feature close-ups of unusual-looking people doing strange and terrible things.

Parker’s script has also given the entire story an overlay of stylized verbal artificiality that hamstrings stars Bridget Fonda and Matthew Broderick, both fine natural actors who are neither comfortable nor convincing in quasi-satirical roles.

She is Eleanor Lightbody, a self-described “Battle freak” headed for her third trip to “the San” with husband Will (Broderick), a weakened former substance abuser who can’t digest anything stronger than tea and toast, in tow.

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Since Kellogg preaches that sexual stimulation could be fatal, the couple is separated after they check in. Will fantasizes over Nurse Graves (Traci Lind) and consoles the seriously ill Ida Muntz (Lara Flynn Boyle) while Eleanor hooks up with the free-spirited Virginia Cranehill (Camryn Manheim) and gets involved in some daring sexual experimentation.

“Wellville” has even more plot strands than these, including Kellogg’s strained relationship with his degenerate adopted son George (Dana Carvey) and the attempt by businessman Charles Ossining (John Cusack) and con man Goodloe Bender (Michael Lerner) to cash in on the rage for breakfast cereal by starting a new brand called Per-Fo.

No flimsy production, the Peter Biziou-shot “Wellville” is vibrant and authentic on a physical level, helped by Penny Rose’s detailed costumes and a convincing series of locales put together by production designer Brian Morris and art directors John Willett and Richard Earl.

But the fact that this part of “Wellville” seems to know what it’s doing only adds to the overall confusion. Ham-fisted as satire, unfunny as slapstick farce and unconvincing as drama, this is one of those films that makes you wonder what the filmmakers thought they were doing. Or who they thought would enjoy whatever it was they did.

* MPAA rating: R, for sex-related humor. Times guidelines: It includes some nudity and a superfluity of bathroom humor.

‘The Road to Wellville’

Anthony Hopkins: Dr. John Harvey Kellogg Bridget Fonda: Eleanor Lightbody Matthew Broderick: Will Lightbody John Cusack: Charles Ossining Dana Carvey: George Kellogg Michael Lerner: Goodloe Bender Colm Meaney: Dr. Lionel Badger A Beacon presentation of a Dirty Hands production, released by Columbia Pictures. Director Alan Parker. Producers Alan Parker, Armyan Bernstein, Robert F. Colesberry. Executive producers Tom Rosenberg, Marc Abraham. Screenplay Alan Parker, based on the novel by T. Coraghessan Boyle. Cinematographer Peter Biziou. Editor Gerry Hambling. Costumes Penny Rose. Music Rachel Portman. Production design Brian Morris. Art directors John Willett, Richard Earl. Set decorator Claudette Didul. Running time: 1 hour, 57 minutes.

In general release throughout Southern California. More Reviews Online

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