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Australia · 1985
Rated R · 1h 38m
Director Dušan Makavejev
Starring Eric Roberts, Greta Scacchi, Bill Kerr, Chris Haywood
Genre Comedy, Drama, Romance
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Becker is an American marketing expert working for The Coca-Cola Company. He travels the world, pushing the product to as many places as possible. When he realizes that there is a part of Australia where absolutely nobody buys Coke, he meets a local entrepreneur who manufactures his own soda and his beautiful daughter.
The Coca-Cola Kid starts out as a lively satire of American business, posing a young Harvard MBA as a pin-striped cowboy attempting to claim a piece of the Australian outback for Coca-Cola. But Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev, like a ham-handed juggler in a high wind, thwarts his promising idea by tossing up a jumble of plot detours and subplots that never come down. [30 Aug 1985, p.B1]
Makavejev's ripping political/scatological wit isn't much in evidence, and the long middle section—involving Roberts's efforts to close down independent bottler Bill Kerr—is soggy and too familiar, but the film lives in a hundred different eccentric details and niceties of execution.
The New York Times by Janet Maslin
The Coca-Cola Kid is of more interest for these oddball peripheral touches than for its awkward attempts at satire.
Washington Post by Rita Kempley
It claims to offer a new formula for comedy, but a lot of filmgoers will probably prefer the classic kind. [30 Aug 1985, p.N23]
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The movie has so many other delights, though, that it's fun anyway. Maybe it wasn't exactly intended to be a love story.
Los Angeles Times by Sheila Benson
A dippy, joyous meander of a movie, more than a little messy but abundantly rewarding.
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