The Cannonball Run (1981) – Review

Just when you thought it was safe to put the handbrake on that weird subgenre of good ol’ boy blockbusters that either saw Burt Reynolds giving smokey the run around or Clint Eastwood bare knuckle boxing with an Orangutan in his corner, along came The Cannonball Run to keep American stuntmen employed almost single handedly.
A natural progression that saw ex-stuntman turned shot caller, Hal Needham, simply take the basic DNA from Smokey And The Bandit and expand on it exponentially, The Cannonball Run could conceivably be seen as the Avengers: Endgame of car chase movies – if you were being kind – but more likely is best compared to those kinds of comedies that Adam Sandler does that just sees him and a bunch of his mates screwing around for a laugh. It may be big, but it certainly ain’t clever – but when everyone seems to be having this much fun, does it actually matter?

It’s that time of year when reckless racers and wannabe speedsters make their way to Connecticut in order to begin the cross country race that sees the various maniacs race from sea to shining sea until they reach the finish line in California to collect a cash prize. As the various delinquents and lunatics try to figure out the sneakiest way of making the journey that’s been described as the automotive counterpart to the Bay of Pigs, we focus on some of the far wackier participants of this particularly wacky race.
First up is famous racing driver and team owner JJ McClure and his big hearted, but oddly disturbed mechanic, Victor Prinzi, who’s curious personality disorder often has him transforming into his heroic alter ego, Captain Chaos, who pick an ambulance as their mode of transport in an attempt to avoid the 10,000 patrolmen just itching to run in any speeding Cannonballers they can find between here and the finish line. Standing against them are former F1 star, the scotch absorbing Jamie Blake and his gambling obsessed teammate, Morris Fenderbaum who are disguised as Catholic priests; two busty, cat-suited thrillseekers named Jill and Narcie who hope that their ample – ah – assets will get them out of any speeding tickets; playboy Seymour Goldfarb Jr. who is under the illusion that he’s Roger Moore; two Japanese drivers in a tricked out, rocket powered Subaru; and the offensively rich Abdul ben Falafel. These, and a whole bunch of other whackos are primed for victory, but trying to ruin it for everyone is Arthur J. Foyt, an advocate for the Safety Enforcement Unit, who wants the race shut down for good. However, in order to get themselves a patient, to make their subterfuge complete, JJ and Victor borrow (read: kidnap) Foyt’s colleague, the ditzy, tree-loving photographer, Pamela Glover.
As these gear-heads roar along the highways of America to win a cash prize, they’ll all stop at nothing to slow each other down or get the upper hand, but who’ll have the Cannonballs to finally come out on top?

So, yeah, The Cannonball Run is about as stupid as it comes and it doesn’t even remotely try to disguise this, but as a continuation of that kind of movies that see various eccentrics, it’s really just It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World with way more horse power. Essentially betting the farm on an impressively stacked cast driving fast cars that crash every so often, the flick is hardly Tolstoy, but even after all these years, it still has goofy charm to spare.
That’s not to say it comes easy… anyone watching the film now who wasn’t even alive in the 80s may find the film is nothing more than a fairly offensive and mildly confusing acid trip that tries to leech off of the start power of a cast who is mostly all dead. But back then, getting Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, crooners Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., Farrah Fawcett, Jackie Chan (in his second American movie) and Roger Moore (who was still playing Bond at the time) into the same movie was no mean feat and isn’t that much different from some of the mega-casts usually assembled today for a superhero movie.

Still, 1981 was a long time ago, and if some of the star power has grown a little stale, some of the lack of political correctness positively stinks – and yet despite all the cheery, racism, sexism, sizism and a rather cavalier attitude to sexual assault, speech impediments and mental illness that’s on display here (it features an Arab character named Falafel for God’s sake) a standard warning that usually comes with any comedy made during the decade powered by cocaine shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Still, even I was taken aback at how much the movie glorifies drink driving- I shit you not, at one instance, Reynolds lands a plane in the middle of a crowed street in order to buy more booze and its also fairly amusing that the villain of the piece simply wants less reckless driving and pollution (Saftey? Boo! Hiss!).
And anyway, there’s legitimate gold here to savour. Newer viewers may be be horrified at the physical abuse a corpsing DeLuise takes from the dreaded open handed slaps from Reynolds during the outtakes, but the pair channel Abbott and Costello like they’ve been fucking posessed. Similarly, the movie may make light of Victor’s obvious multiple personality disorder, but whenever he suddenly turns up in his Captain Chaos getup with his trademark “Dun-dun DUUUN“, I just can’t help but smile. Elsewhere we find an extremely game Roger Moore sending himself up magnificently, a random burst of Jackie Chan martial arts (bizarrely, the movie was financed by Hong Kong studio Golden Harvest – hence Chan’s separate screen time) and some prime time mugging from two out of five members of the Rat Pack, and it’s tough not to truly get caught up in the charm offensive even when a smug JJ jawdroppingly gaslights the dim Pamela about being dragged into a speeding ambulance (“You can call it kidnapping, if you want to be rude.”).

Ok, so assurances that the movie is “of it’s time” may only take you so far, but while there admittedly is some highly questionable shit present, the jokes are endearingly dopey, everyone is obviously having fun (except that stunt woman who was paralyzed during filming) and virtually every scene ends with a random stunt whether it calls for it or not. As the years tick on, The Cannonball Run may seem dumber and more iffy to every passing generation that decides to give it a look, but as a snapshot of sheer 80s star power just fucking around on gags straight out of a road Runner cartoon, there’s something weirdly sweet about it – even if it’s more throwback than hatchback.

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