Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It is a performances centric movie

An unexpected masterpiece

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

In some ways "The Coca Cola Kid" may be the weirdest movie famously bizarre Serbian filmmaker Dusan Makavejev ever made.At least with his most out there material such as "WR:Secrets of the Organism" and "Sweet Movie", there was a sense that a sure hand was behind all the mayhem on screen. Even if you didn't get it you knew it meant something or had some purpose.The Coca Cola Kid is a movie without purpose. It is one of those obscure '90s movies that assumes a left-field plot guarantees a worthwhile story. It doesn't.What amazes me is that a filmmaker with such an indelible style as Makavejev was responsible for this yawnfest. Any filmmaker could have made it.The film stars Eric Roberts as a weird, unknowable executive who wants to find out why a town in Australia doesn't use Coke products. So he travels all the way from America to the bush to solve this life altering mystery. There he meets a young lady played by Greta Scacchi who wanders through the movie like a dense Susan Sarandon. She has a daughter played by a pretty bad child actress, and they have a weird bathing scene together which is probably the only reason anyone today would watch this mess.I didn't care at all about anything that happens in this movie. I didn't care about the characters, and some of the comedic subplots or side characters were just boring and stupid, like the hotel busboy who is convinced that the Eric Roberts character is really a secret agent for no reason other than that the movie needed comic relief in those scenes. If you are going to have a buffoonish character who the audience should laugh at, it helps to actually have some sense of why or how the character arrived at their misunderstanding. Are they crazy, or stupid, or both? The character appears to be neither, so it seems totally forced and unbearable every time he is on screen.The Coca Cola Kid may be an even bigger mystery than Sweet Movie, but the mystery is not contained in the material, it was there at inception: why did Makavejev make this mess?

Becker (Eric Roberts) is an eccentric self-possessed sales trouble-shooter sent to Australia from the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta. Terri (Greta Scacchi) is assigned to be his secretary. DMZ is her daughter. He finds one specific area where there is no Coke being sold. It's Anderson valley where Terri comes from. The valley is run by the proud McDowell who makes and sells his own soft drink. He has a history with a Coke advertising girl and together they have a daughter. Becker is looking for the Australian sound.Eric Roberts is terrific. He has a magical moment with a glass of Coke. I'm always surprised at the film's declaration that they have no connection to Coke. His presentation is like a Mamet speech about the love of Coke. Greta Scacchi is funny and super sexy as a Coca Cola Santa. The problem is that the story isn't much in between the fun scenes. Some of the music is catchy and the movie is a bit of fun.

The opening titles for The Coca-Cola Kid make it clear that the film is in no way sponsored by Coca-Cola or the Coca-Cola bottling company. Obviously the company felt comfortable enough with the final product to let the film use their name, but it's hardly a glowing picture of the soft drink giant. In The Coca-Cola Kid, Coca-Cola is the face of American Imperialism. When company trouble shooter Becker (Eric Roberts) declares, "The world will not be truly free until Coke is available everywhere," he's speaking without irony. This film, then, is about Becker's attempts to help Coca-Cola colonize Australia, but what starts off as a film of comic promise and originality becomes bogged down in convention and cliché to the point that it's difficult by the final reel to remember what was so appealing at the beginning.The Coca-Cola Kid fits nicely in the genre of American Corporate Fish Out Of Water tales. If you've seen the delightful Local Hero, for example, you'll know that no matter what kind of tough American goes off to the rural wasteland, he'll change, enlightened by the small town quirks and wisdom he was meant to subvert. That's not really giving anything away in this film, because the last act doesn't play out as you expect. In fact, it hardly plays out at all.Becker arrives in Australia to help boost lagging sales. It turns out that there's a whole region of the country where no Coke is sold at all. Becker, a former marine with the proverbial "unorthodox way of doing business," discovers that that region is ruled over by T. George McDowell (Bill Kerr) a gruff man of homespun wisdom, but more importantly, homemade soft drinks, made from real fruit. Even though their first encounter is rough, Becker is determined to fight off the advances of his secretary-with-a-secret (Greta Scacchi) and the hotel waiter who mistakes him for an arms dealer to do the job he was sent to do.Directed by Dusan Makavejev, The Coca-Cola Kid develops a wonderful momentum early on. In fact, the first hour of the film is an absolute gem. Eric Roberts's performance to that point is perfect. His presentation to the bemused Coke officials is comic gold, as he waxes poetic about the fizzy beverage, even holding it up to the light bathing the room in its brown glow. Roberts's early scenes with Scacchi have a nice screwball touch and his interactions with Scacchi's moppet daughter provide a nice depth for the character, hinting at something beyond his intensity. There's a nifty sequence where Becker enlists a studio band to try to come up with the "sound of Australia" where they go through several absurd suggestions before coming up with a truly catchy jingle.I'm not sure how far it is into the movie, but for me things begin to go south immediately after that recording session. For reasons completely unclear to me, the secretary has Becker invited to a party to catch him in an awkward position. This involves completely random intimations of homosexuality and ends of feeling both forced and pointless. The scene is so clumsy that it leaves a bad taste that begins to spread.It rapidly becomes clear that The Coca-Cola Kid isn't going to omit a single convention of Australian culture. You want an old bushman with a diggerydoo (inevitably misspelled, but my dictionary is letting me down)? You've got it. An adorable wounded Kangaroo? Bingo! And a slightly inbred man singing a rousing chorus of "Walzing Matilda?" Yup-Yup. In fact, the vision of Australia put forth by the film is so cookie-cutter that it's hard to feel bad about the culture being overrun by American interests. You support Coke because you figure they're at least putting forth a good product.Eric Roberts's performance finally ends up being a little infuriating because he's not given any opportunity or reason to be anything other than amusingly scary. The film falls apart at just the point you wish Roberts would go through the obligatory character alteration, but there's just no chance. He's stranded. Ditto Scacchi. She adorable and makes the sexiest Santa in the history of cinema, but her character's payoff is weak. Bill Kerr is excellent for the most part, but you can't help but feel that his cagey old Outback Vet is a character we've seen a thousand times.The Coca-Cola Kid's best and most consistent feature is its cinematography by Dean Semler. The Oscar winner (for Dances With Wolves) does what the script and director can't do -- he creates the ironic counterpoint between the Outback, the big city, and Eric Roberts. The film has a dynamic look which, unlike the narrative, doesn't fall apart at the end.I do feel bad about only giving this movie a 6/10, but I guess I should have just turned it off early. Off to drink a Coke...

I love Eric Roberts but what is this movie about? I know what the premise is about but dam was this movie horrible! Eric is a strong talent in this dark-comedy but I swear that song is the only thing I really liked! I just bought the movie for Eric and that awesome song! The song gets 4 stars but the movie out of 4 star gets a 1/2 star. Love ya Eric but this was not for me!