The Coca-Cola Kid (1985)

Description[from Freebase]

The Coca−Cola Kid is an Australian romantic comedy film, released in 1985. It was directed by Dušan Makavejev and starred Eric Roberts and Greta Scacchi. The film is based on short stories in The Americans, Baby, and The Electrical Experience by Frank Moorhouse, who wrote the screenplay. It was entered into the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. Becker, a hotshot American marketing executive (played by Roberts) from The Coca-Cola Company visits their Australian operations 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 very pretty secretary (played by Scacchi) who is assigned to help him. Eventually Becker discovers that a local producer of soft drinks 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.

Review

Deep in the Culture Club era and far away down under, Dusan Makavejev took us on one of his most mainstream productions with this story of Eric Roberts as an Atlanta Coke executive who comes to Australia to sell more product. There he discovers a town that doesn't drink Coke at all -- because a local business-/mad-man is bottling his own soft drinks, loved by the locals. What follows is a bizarre tale of sexual ambivalence, oddball family relations, and a Cola war the likes of which the world has never seen. The first half is far better than the resolution, which eventually meanders off to the point of silliness.
by Christopher Null, Filmcritic.com
Portions from Freebase, licensed under CC-BY and Wikipedia licensed under the GFDL