MOVIES: The Cannonball Run

I've always had fond memories of The Cannonball Run, so when I saw the DVD in one of those budget two-packs (with Caddyshack) at Best Buy, I decided to pick it up. And oh my lord, that is one of the stupidest damn movies ever made. Why did I used to like this?

First of all, there's no character development, there's no story, other than the big race. Nor should there be, really; it's a light road comedy, you want to get to the action as quickly as possible. But still, how hard is it to go, "Here's Burt Reynolds' character, J.J. McClure; here is what makes him human; here is why you should give two shits about him." But that doesn't happen, so unless you're still living in 1981, and are so fully invested in and charmed by Burt Reynolds as a person that you love him no matter what character he's playing, you just don't care about him or his antics at all. And he's the most fully fleshed-out character.

Other participants in this train wreck of a movie:

• Roger Moore, playing Seymour Goldfarb, Jr., a man who thinks he's... Roger Moore. A Roger Moore who has all of James Bond's gadgets and women. But James Bond is never explicitly mentioned. In fact, in one scene, you can see by lip-reading that Moore is talking about the film The Spy Who Loved Me, but what you hear is The Fly Who Bugged Me. Think they were threatened with a lawsuit? (Another strange dubbing moment on this DVD: one character very clearly forms the words, "Slicker than shit through a goose," but the vocal track says, "Slicker than shot through a gun." The cursing remains intact throughout the rest of the film; why that one overdub?)


• Farrah Fawcett, whose character allows Burt Reynolds to call her "Beauty" rather than her real name, gives the impression that this is because she feels a man's name for her is clearly superior to her actual name. Her character is an environmentalist, sweet and demure except for the fact that she keeps telling (or trying to tell) complete strangers that she loves trees "because you can lie under them at night, and look at the stars, and listen to the wind in the leaves, and ball your brains out!" ("Ball"?) Also, she's kidnapped by Burt Reynolds early in the film, literally kidnapped and driven cross country, but she succumbs to the most rapid and complete case of Stockholm Syndrome ever seen.


• Jackie Chan, who is Chinese, plays a Japanese driver named... Jackie Chan. This was his first American film. And he was never heard from again.


• Terry Bradshaw is in this thing. Terry frickin' Bradshaw.


• Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. disguise themselves as priests, hard-drinking, foul-mouthed priests. Ah, the good old days, when drunk driving was funny. (See also Arthur.) The one bit in this movie I remember liking as a kid that I still liked was when Sammy says, "Why'd he call me shorty?" and Dean says, "Because you're small. Small. S-M-All." That's funny. Well, it is!


• Bert Convy is in this thing, too. Game show host Bert Convy. Wow. He drives a motorcycle, and makes his male teammate wear a bridal gown, on the theory that cops won't pull over newlyweds. But his teammate is so fat, Convy can't make the motorcycle stop popping a wheelie. Ha.


• Adrienne Barbeau appears in this movie for the sole purpose of sexily unzipping her skintight racing gear. Bless her heart.


• God, I can't list all these sons of bitches. There's also Jamie Farr, Jimmy the Greek, Valerie Perrine, Jack Elam, Mel Tillis, and Peter Fonda, none of whom, now that I think about it, deserved anything better than this film.

And, lest you think I forget, the #1 reason I enjoyed this film as a kid: Dom DeLuise. I thought he was the funniest thing ever. Captain Chaos! Dun-dun-DUNNN! Watching the movie this time, I just felt sad for him. Burt Reynolds is always yelling at him and slapping him. And you just know that's a carry-over from real life. Some guys, however handsome and popular they are, still want to have someone demonstrably less handsome and popular by their side, someone they can belittle and abuse to make themselves feel even bigger, someone who will willingly take that abuse for the privilege of joining the popular club.

The same kind of thing happens with Dean and Sammy. Dean's constantly slapping Sammy in this movie. And those are real slaps. I'm sure that's only the smallest sample of what Sammy had to endure to be the only black guy admitted to the Rat Pack. I laughed at the time, but now it just makes me cringe.

Horrified by the awful, humorless writing and acting, I thought, well, at least there'll be some cool driving action. Uh, nope. We see cars driving a lot, but very little interesting driving. Jackie Chan launches his car off a sand dune. Terry Bradshaw drives his car into a swimming pool. Some guy named Mad Dog drives his truck into a hotel lobby. Roger Moore has smoke screens and oil slicks, of course. But there's really very little racing action for a movie all about a cross country race.

And the race ends in a very stupid way (you will be shocked to hear). The way the race works is, you punch a time card in at the beginning of the race, then punch it in again at the end of the race. Best time wins. At the end, a whole group of drivers are running to the finish line. Burt Reynolds slows them down, and Adrienne Barbeau winds up punching her card first. And everyone else just stands there and groans with disappointment. Hey, shitheads! Some of you left the starting line after Adrienne Barbeau did! If you'd just punch your card, your time might still be the best. But nobody does. They all concede the victory. Jesus, why race 3,000 miles if you're going to give up in the last ten feet? Idiots.

Now I want to watch Smokey & the Bandit again, to see if it also fails to measure up to my recollection of it. But I'm scared to. I don't want to ruin all my childhood memories. Not all at once, anyway.