As Eleanor Roosevelt once taught us, America is all about speed.
Hot, nasty, badass speed.
Incidentally, that quote was used in a memetic film that was also coincidentally a comedy about people who race cars. This film is not that film.
No, instead we'll be winding the clocks back to 1981. Reagan's in the White House, cocaine was still comically available despite being illegal as all hell and...uh...Wings broke up.
This intro is dragging on, let's get on with it.
So, what is The Cannonball Run? As the beginning part of that intro would tell you - it's a comedy about racing. Rather than something related to NASCAR or the like, this is about underground street racing...but done with an all-star cast and wacky antics. So, basically Fast and the Furious, but y'know...funny.
. . .and also good.
Since The Cannonball Run is going to be forty as of this year, I thought it would be a good time to talk about one of my favorite comedies of all time. So, here we go...
The entire plot centers around a race known as the Cannonball Run, a cross-country car race from Connecticut to California with only a single rule - get from Point A to Point B in as little time as possible by any means necessary. Basically, it's a free for all from coast to coast. The film itself was inspired by an actual race by the same name, also illegal, where people attempted to get from either New York or Connecticut (depending on the year) to California and for bonus points (except not really) try to break the 55 miles per hour speed limit here in America.
One of those races was run by a journalist named Brock Yates and a man named Hal Needham, the latter of which we'll be getting back to in a minute. They managed to make the trip in just over sixty hours in an ambulance...which very much contributed to the efforts of a few of our characters in the film as we'll soon see. Brock Yates went on to become the screenwriter and Hal Needham became the director of this film, which is by no means a coincidence.
And yes, before anyone gets on my case about it, Hal Needham was also the mind behind Smokey and the Bandit.
I'll get to that another day.
Of course, The Cannonball Run is very much in the same vein as that film, the only difference here is that the prize here is one million dollars instead of a pay off for selling a shipment of bootleg beer. Here we come to our all-star case and yes, for 1981, that term is very appropriate. We have (among others):
- JJ McClure (Burt Reynolds) and Victor Prinzi (Dom DeLuise) as a duo of mechanics who serve as our leads in the film. JJ and Victor are mechanics who spend a good bit of time before the race trying to decide what to ride in for the Cannonball, eventually a mishap getting them onboard an ambulance …and a few choice words from Brock Yates in a cameo appearance convinces them that it's the perfect cover. Victor also has a split personality, Captain Chaos, who pops up every so often. JJ does not like to talk about...him...
- Jamie Blake (Dean Martin) and Morris Fenderbaum (Sammy Davis, Jr.) are a former F1 driver and a con man, respectively, who decide to hop into a souped up Ferrari and disguise themselves as priests in order to compete. Incidentally, The Cannonball Run was one of the last two films that Dean Martin ever appeared in.
- Jackie Chan (playing himself, in one of his very first Hollywood movie appearances) and Michael Hui (presumably also playing himself, but as a high tech expert) come to America with a rocket-powered Subaru.
- Jill (Tara Buckman) and Marcie (Adrienne Barbeau) play a pair of amply-endowed women in a Lamborghini, most of their jokes in the film involving pulling down a zipper to distracted a highway patrolman or five.
- The Sheikh (Jamie Farr) is the son of an oil-baron from the Middle East and is determined to win the Cannonball for the forces of Islam - a joke that really could have only been done in 1981, honestly...
- A pair of country boys that definitely weren't inspired by the Dukes of Hazzard (Terry Bradshaw and Mel Tillis) who have the magical ability to change their car from a Laguna to a Monte Carlo.
- Seymour Goldfarb, Jr. - or rather, "Roger Moore" - (Roger Moore), an esteemed actor who is a parody of James Bond. This is especially funny considering that - 1) this is Roger Moore and 2) they somehow managed to get one of the actual James Bonds during the time that they were actually James Bond. Cannonball Run came out at around the same time as the Bond film For Your Eyes Only. Moore's car in the film is an Aston Martin (as you'd expect), but with many of the James Bond gadgets and gizmos to give him an edge.
Rounding out the cast, we have Western legend Jack Elam playing the off-putting and yet quirky Dr. Van Helsing, George Furth as anti-Cannonball busy body Arthur J. Foyt, and 1970's and 1980's sex symbol Farrah Fawcett playing "Beauty", real name Pamela Glover. She's an activist at a meeting with Foyt's group, but gets drawn into events when JJ and Victor come to the conclusion that they need a patient in the ambulance (having already gotten a doctor in Van Helsing).
That's right, Farrah Fawcett is in on it via Stockholm Syndrome! There's even an awkward rape joke smashed right in a few scenes after she's originally brought onboard...because it's 1981!
That aside, though, you have an absolutely great cast. Our main focus is, of course, mostly on JJ and Victor and their team in the ambulance. We do actually get some good character motivation and even a bit of development in a few scenes. At one point, Pamela asks JJ why he's participating in the Cannonball, and he gives a pretty damn good reason for it: his father died three days before he was going to retire, inspiring JJ to pursue whatever he wanted given that you never know how much time you have. No matter what it was, he was going to go for it.
Simple, not too-overwritten, and a brief pause to let us calm down from the laughter. This is definitely a film where you'll be laughing a lot. The cast is lightning in a bottle, almost everyone has fantastic chemistry with one another. In particular Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise make a fantastic double act. Everybody is at the top of their game and there isn't an interaction in the film that doesn't feel natural, if a little comedic in origin almost every time (as if the genre wasn't a dead giveaway to that).
It's hard to really explain in words, given that comedy is a subjective thing. The gags do have variety and the jokes honestly land really great overall. It's a fun movie to watch and it's one I could honestly watch on repeat if I absolutely had to. I really wish I could say the same for the sequels. Yes, there are sequels. Two sequels, as a matter of fact. One of them is ok, the other...not so much.
The Cannonball Run, though, was a hit in 1981 and rightly so. As the tagline says - "You'll root for them all, but you'll never guess who wins". Like many things in life, it's not the journey, but the destination. Be careful, though, you may just die laughing before they reach the finish line!
I really can't undersell this movie. It's just so damn good! Go watch it!
The Cannonball Run was brought to use by Golden Harvest and 20th Century Fox.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
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