Fox (Fat White Vampire Blues
) pens a half-baked riff on Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
that imagines a near-future America where the government brutally enforces dietary laws through vigilante squads in repossessed ice cream trucks. When a raid on contraband cheese turns deadly, middle-aged Good Humor man Louis Shmalzberg, a former liposuction surgeon, predictably begins to question his vocation. When a pair of mysterious men demand that Louis turn over a vacuum jar of fat and stomach fluid removed during the botched lipo operation Louis's father performed on Elvis, Louis embarks on a contrived chase across the country, incidentally investigating a corporate conspiracy that's fast becoming a national health crisis. Fox's pseudosatirical premise could work as farce, but endless expository conversations and lifeless characters (including some eyebrow-raising racial stereotypes) make this contrived yarn unconvincing. (May)
