AllMovie

200 Cigarettes is an attempt at Nashville for the MTV generation. Director Risa Bramon Garcia follows two dozen or so characters through various adventures on New Year's Eve, 1981. As opposed to the Altman film, 200 Cigarettes has nothing interesting or specific to say about the time period it is set in. With a couple of exceptions, the characters have not been given enough of an identity to register as anything other than familiar stereotypes. Paul Rudd and Courtney Love playing lifelong friends do an entertaining will-they-or-won't-they pas de deux, the woefully underappreciated Martha Plimpton gets laughs as a bundle of neuroses who grows more and more stressed out as people fail to appear for her party, and Janeane Garofalo earns some giggles playing her recognizable persona. These four performers are talented enough to transcend the uninspired dialogue they have been saddled with, but that is not enough to make 200 Cigarettes really worthwhile. Watching this movie is like being at a New Year's Eve party full of people you have no desire to celebrate with.