''The Coca-Cola Kid'' is a 1985 Australian
romantic comedy
Romantic comedy (also known as romcom or rom-com) is a subgenre of comedy and slice of life fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount most obstacles. In a typica ...
film. It was directed by
Dušan Makavejev
Dušan Makavejev ( sr-Cyrl, Душан Макавејев, ; 13 October 1932 – 25 January 2019) was a Serbian film director and screenwriter, famous for his groundbreaking films of Yugoslav cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s—many of wh ...
and stars
Eric Roberts
Eric Anthony Roberts (born April 18, 1956) is an American actor. His career began with a leading role in ''King of the Gypsies'' (1978) for which he received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. He was nominated again at the Golden Globes fo ...
and
Greta Scacchi
Greta Scacchi, OMRI (; born 18 February 1960) is an Italian-Australian actress. She holds dual Italian and Australian citizenship. She is best known for her roles in the films '' White Mischief'' (1987), '' Presumed Innocent'' (1990), '' The Pl ...
. The film is based on the short stories ''The Americans, Baby'', and ''The Electrical Experience'' by
Frank Moorhouse
Frank Thomas Moorhouse (21 December 1938 – 26 June 2022) was an Australian writer. He won major Australian national prizes for the short story, the novel, the essay, and for script writing. His work has been published in the United Kingdom, ...
, who wrote the screenplay. It was entered into the
1985 Cannes Film Festival.
Plot
Becker, a hotshot American
marketing
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...
executive (played by Roberts) from
The Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational beverage corporation founded in 1892, best known as the producer of Coca-Cola. The Coca-Cola Company also manufactures, sells, and markets other non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups, ...
, visits their Australian operations in Sydney and tries to figure out why a tiny corner of Australia (the fictional town of Anderson Valley) has so far resisted all of Coke's products. He literally bumps into the secretary (played by Scacchi) who is assigned to help him.
Becker discovers that a local producer of
soft drink
A soft drink (see § Terminology for other names) is a drink that usually contains water (often carbonated), a sweetener, and a natural and/or artificial flavoring. The sweetener may be a sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, a su ...
s run by an old eccentric has been successfully fending off the American brand name products. The executive vows an all out marketing war with the eccentric but eventually comes to reconsider his role as a cog in Coca-Cola's giant corporate machinery. Along the way there are humorous subplots involving the office manager's violent ex-husband, Becker's attempt to find the 'Australian sound', and an odd waiter who is under the mistaken belief that Becker is a
secret agent
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...
.
Cast
Production
David Stratton
David James Stratton (born 10 September 1939) is an English-Australian award-winning film critic, as both a journalist and interviewer, film historian and lecturer and television personality and producer.
Life and career
Born in Trowbridge, ...
gave a copy of Frank Moorhouse's book ''The Americans, Baby'' to Dusan Makavejev when he attended the
Sydney Film Festival
The Sydney Film Festival is an annual competitive film festival held in Sydney, Australia, usually over 12 days in June. A number of awards are given, the top one being the Sydney Film Prize.
the festival's director is Nashen Moodley.
Histo ...
in 1975 with ''
Sweet Movie
''Sweet Movie'' is a 1974 avant-garde surrealist comedy-drama film written and directed by Yugoslavian director Dušan Makavejev.
An international co-production of companies from France, Canada, and West Germany, the film follows two women: a Can ...
''. Production of the movie was difficult in part because of Makavejev's work methods, which were different from the way films were normally made in Australia.
Denny Lawrence
Denny Lawrence (born 1951 in Sydney) is an Australian actor, writer, producer and director of television, theatre and film.
He studied at National Institute of Dramatic Art, NIDA and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. Among his mo ...
came on board the film as a consultant.
[David Stratton, ''The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry'', Pan MacMillan, 1990 p321-323]
''The Coca-Cola Kid'' was shot on location in
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
–various city landmarks can be seen briefly throughout the film.
Reception
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
gives ''The Coca-Cola Kid'' a rating of 47% from 17 reviews.
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and said that the movie was "filled with moments of inspiration," but believed that "the last half of the film
..does not quite deliver on the promises of the first half."
Box office
''The Coca-Cola Kid'' grossed $36,365 at the box office in Australia.
Home media
MGM Home Entertainment
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Home Entertainment LLC (d/b/a MGM Home Entertainment and formerly known as MGM Home Video, MGM/CBS Home Video and MGM/UA Home Video) is the home video division of the American media company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
History 1 ...
released the
Region 1 DVD in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
on 16 April 2002. Umbrella Entertainment released a region free version in May 2009. The DVD includes special features such as the theatrical trailer, and an interview with Greta Scacchi and David Roe titled ''The Real Thing''.
Fun City Edition released the film on Blu-ray in the United States on 16 June 2022.
In addition to the features included in the 2009 DVD, the Blu-ray contains an interview with Eric Roberts and a new audio commentary.
Accolades
See also
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Cinema of Australia
The cinema of Australia had its beginnings with the 1906 production of ''The Story of the Kelly Gang'', arguably the world's first feature film. Since then, Australian crews have produced many films, a number of which have received internati ...
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Coca-Cola Kid, The
1985 films
1985 romantic comedy films
Coca-Cola in popular culture
Australian romantic comedy films
Films about food and drink
Films directed by Dušan Makavejev
Films based on works by Australian writers
Films based on short fiction
Films shot in Sydney
Films set in Sydney
Works by Frank Moorhouse
1980s English-language films