FuzzyTagz
If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
Fairaher
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Murphy Howard
I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
Logan
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
wannasurf2
This movie is a perfect example of guilty pleasure. Sure, it is not well written (or is it?). It isn't well acted (or was it?). My point, this movie was a literal "winkathon". In other words, it was meant to be corny, goofy, silly, and down right fun to watch. That being said, go back and watch it again and you will see my point. Where did a (current) 4.X rating come from? All I can figure that is comes from votes from clueless suburbans, or maybe teens that don't realize how iconic this movie is, or how this movie was one of the last blasts of the drive-in culture of America. Sure, it's not Citizen Kane...but should merit an easy 6 on cast names alone.That said, what really makes this movie great is the talent in it! It may be the best collection of screen legends and icon ever assembled. The point in time when this movie was made allowed this phenomenon to be possible. In 1984, most of these actors were slightly past their peak, but still in the acting game...so this may explain the ability to cast all of them (without a billion dollar budget). Try to replicate this today with an equivalent assortment of actors, and it would not be possible.What makes this A-list super-fest even more golden is the fact that nearly every major player in this picture is now gone, or well up in years. Think of this movie as a video history of screen legends, or even a vague record of the car culture of the 70's and the phenomenon the actual Brock Yates cross country races were.But if you are too young to know who these actors are, know nothing about the real Cannonball races, and don't appreciate drive-in type cinema/comedy, skip this one (rather than give it an unfair vote). Do that for me, and I won't give movies like Twilight or Lord of the Rings a 2.
Smile_U_SOB
This film has no race and no chase. Okay there is a race but it has really nothing to do with the movie. The first film of course is all about "The Cannonball Run", which is an illegal race from coast to coast, written by Brock Yates who, along with director Hal Needham, actually drove an ambulance across America - and it's Yates who invented the Cannonball Run. In the original, Burt and Dom use the very same ambulance; now we have a sequel which isn't written by Yates, and is as bad a sequel as I've yet to witness on screen. As mentioned, the actual coast to coast race has little to do with anything this time around. Instead there's a lame subplot about mobsters trying to hijack Jamie Farr's character, an Arab with tons of oil money who this time around is funding the prize at the finish line. So basically this is a comic mobster film with a bunch of actors thrown in who are driving cars. Jack Elam, who is incredible in the first film, is thrown in as wallpaper. Burt and Dom are horrible and lazy; you can tell they were just doing the film for a paycheck. Shirley Maclaine and Marilu Henner play actresses dressed as nuns, and we have to sit through people doing double-takes as these impostor penguins curse in public. Boring. Horrible. Jackie Chan is even ruined this time around. In the first film Roger Moore plays a guy who thinks he's Roger Moore, and thus he drives a gadget filled car, ala Bond. This time around, Chan, who had some gadgets of his own in the original, has even more gadgets as he's basically replacing the Moore/Bond character from the original. And his driver is Richard Kiel, best known as Bond nemesis "Jaws". Chan's car even goes under water, just like Bond's car in "The Spy Who Loved Me" (which featured Kiel). Other contestants include an ape teamed up with Tony Danza. All I have to ask Tony is: Didn't "Going Ape" teach you not to work with primates? Jamie Farr's character is ruined because he's too involved; his sheik was far better as a cameo in the original. And Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr are totally wasted this time, disguised as cops instead of priests, and they don't even get into any trouble. Burt and Dom are dressed as soldiers; Burt is a general and Dom is a private. They pick up Jim Nabors along the way, as "Private Lyle" (guess what they're spoofing here?) and his cameo is as useless as an air conditioner in an igloo. It doesn't feel as if there is any "need" to win the race for any of the characters. You forget there is even a race at all. Man, I tell you, this is one of the worst sequels - if not the worst sequel ever, ever, ever made. Avoid it at all costs. Even as a kid I knew it was chum.
Quag7
I wouldn't even bother commenting on the execrable cesspool of a film if its very existence didn't offend me.I hated this film. Hated it to a degree that I cannot even find the words to express myself. This is literally (and I do mean literally; this is not hyperbole) the low point of western civilization since the Spanish Inquisition.I enjoy a goofy Saturday afternoon or late night insomnia movie like anyone. I even enjoy bad movies if they are bad in a charming or kitschy way. What really makes this movie offense and vulgar is the sense of smug satisfaction of the giant ensemble cast.One of the worst feelings you can experience is embarrassment for another person, and this movie is, from beginning to end, a combination of feeling embarrassed for everyone involved coupled with insult and outrage. The idea that someone would find this worth watching is insulting. The idea that such a thing as this movie should even exist on a roll of film somewhere is offensive. I will have trouble sleeping knowing that somewhere within one thousand miles of me, some unclean television sits that once showed even a split second of this film.Quite literally, you, who are reading this comment, could have made a better film if I handed you a home video camera and shoved you out into the desert, then kneecapped you and left you for dead without water so that all you could film was the meager piece of ground you were capable of crawling across.I am wounded psychologically from having to sit through the sight of Burt Reynolds, Sammy Davis, and Dom DeLuise in drag.I could go cast member by cast member here, each of whom should be ashamed of themselves to this day and should be made to atone for their sins before a public tribunal of fire and pitchforks and angry mobs. All of my political principles go out the door when it comes to this movie - I want to see someone hanged, publicly and brutally, for bringing this abomination of a film into existence. I want to go Jacques deMolay on the whole cast. Forget dreading Friday the 13th; we should all rue the day this film was released, instead.I am permanently and incurably scarred by having to look at cars in this movie from the worst era for car design in the auto industry's history. What in God's name were people thinking in the 1980s - about EVERYTHING? The Mitsubishi in particular is one of the most shameful and odious pieces of machinery I have ever had the misfortune of laying my eyes on. I have yet to encounter anything, for example, in the dark recesses of the internet, so thoroughly offensive as the vehicles in this miserable "film." This is a movie about a race; the least they could have done is found some decent cars rather than relying on the miserable, unclean, blasphemous detritus of the era. The cars and Burt Reynold's mustache in this film are an affront to God and humanity. Each should be punished severely and swiftly. I want to hear someone scream.This is a movie full of people very amused with themselves with zero regard for the audience. The contempt for the audience is palpable. Not a single shred of effort was made - this is Burt and Dom partying on someone else's dollar, and the film itself equates to abuse and trauma. Not a single idea here is new - simian (literally) humor, dressing people up in drag, stereotypes, and a bunch of unlikely and trite crashes and disasters evoke nothing so much as Stalin era gulags and syphilis experiments.I hate this movie. Hate everything about it. Hate its presumptuousness, hate every actor who appeared for appearing in it. The entire acting career of everyone involved here should be completely discredited simply by virtue of appearing in this film. I want to see people kicked out of SAG, blacklists, exile, and angry mobs rampaging through the streets of Beverly Hills or Malibu or wherever these people live. I want to see tribunals and fire and primitive religious symbols and hooded men with axes.I will never be the same again, and I curse the day I saw this film.I have seen many movies, and this, I have to say, is the worst movie ever made. I am an enthusiastic and radical opponent of censorship but I make an exception for this witless, charmless, unfunny, vacuous disgrace of a film. Every copy in existence should be hunted down and burned, and any note of its existence should be wiped out of film guides and so on under penalty of death. When this campaign ends, we should start history over with Year 1. History should be rewritten, exactly as it happened, minus the existence of this film. Penalties should be doled out. We are talking stretch racks and iron maidens and bamboo under fingernails.I HATE THIS MOVIE.
justkazuke
The first Cannonball Run is my all time favorite movie, so much that I hope I can forget this one and dare not touch the third. The Remakes may have some hope but on to the review.After having seen the first, I loved the sea-to-shining-sea Racing idea, the fast cars, and the fast girls; I couldn't resist the sequel, Cannonball Run II. But what happens when you have less fast cars, less fast girls and then you take the racing concept out of it? This movie. The ideas such as the nuns and the mafia were not bad ideas. But I have no explanation nor remorse for their failed execution.If I could sum up the movie for those who have seen or wish to see it, take out the racing and add the greed for money. That's it. I can't stop you from watching but I'll sure as hell try.