The Coca-Cola Kid (1985)

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Directed by Dusan Makavejev.

Starring Chris Haywood, Bill Kerr, Kris McQuade, Greta Scacchi, Eric Roberts.

The ugly American bullying his way through a foreign country was a subject for comedy in several films of the 1980s, most notably Bill Forsyth's Local Hero and this film from exiled Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev. Eric Roberts plays Becker, an aggressive marketing executive for the Coca-Cola Company; he has been assigned to figure out why sales in hot and dry Australia aren't higher. Becker comes up against a low-key but formidable adversary, T. George McDowell (Bill Kerr), whose homegrown soda has cornered the market in his little corner of the country. Complicating matters is Terri, a local woman (Greta Scacchi) Becker hires as his secretary; she's McDowell's daughter and a single mom who's romantically attracted to the brash American. Becker wants to make a deal on his (and his employer's) terms, but he finds himself falling prey to the charms of life Down Under and the ministrations of Terri. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

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Coca-Cola Cinema
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com

hasn't rated it.

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"This morning I was watching Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three (see, readers, I do know movies before 1990), and it made me wonder if Coca-Cola is the most cinematic commercial product in the history of film. Not the most prominent in film, necessarily (in terms of either direct product placement or more casual indirect appearance,) but at least the most significant to film. After all, Coca-Cola did own a movie studio (Columbia Pictures) for the greater part of a decade (the 1980s). In addition to One, Two, Three, which is about a Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin, the soft drink figures specifically in and fundamentally to the plots of The Gods Must Be Crazy, Good Bye Lenin! and, obviously, The Coca-Cola Kid. But primarily, such direct incorporations of the brand are more about their connection to the U.S. and capitalism than they are to the actual product of soda. Even when Superman throws a bad guy at a giant Coca-Cola billboard in Superman II, the brand comes with a connotation of ... " [More]

Review by All Movie Guide

All Movie Guide

is neutral about it.

Arguably Dusan Makavejev's most accessible and entertaining film, The Coca-Cola Kid is a genial comedy with a rare light performance by Eric Roberts, whose subsequent roles devolved largely into villains and psychotics. Makavejev plays off Roberts' clenched line readings to suggest that here is a man who just needs a little loosening up, and he'll be okay. In fact, Roberts' Becker is a distant cousin to Susan Anspach's uptight American in Makavejev's most popular film, Montenegro. The Coca-Cola Kid also pokes fun at the Australians, too; if Becker is wound a bit too tight, they're shown as making a fetish out of being laid-back. Their "no worries mate" philosophy does begin to loosen up Becker, and it helps to have a sexy woman (Greta Scacchi in her second important film after a stunning debut in Heat and Dust) as the bait. The film may not be as textured and consistently entertaining as Local Hero, but it's got fizz enough. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

Tags: australia , business , executive , love , relaxation
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