Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

O2D A seemingly unrelated group of people are going to race from New York City To Los Angeles.The winner gets a gum ball machine. That premise is the funniest thing about this movie. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this movie but had no idea it was a comedy till I saw the poster 1 minute ago. With an already thin plot, this movie drops the ball on one of the characters. A mechanic who doesn't have a car(yeah right) wants to join the race.He sees an ad in the paper for a person to drive a Rolls Royce to LA and you see where this is going. He leaves the garage while it's dark out and doesn't get to the guys house till it's daylight.Lots of other things that don't make sense happen, then they get there and the mechanic doesn't go to the finish line,he delivers the car! Huh? The only reason he drove the car was to win the race and then he just gives up? Not original and not funny but worth seeing once.

mark.waltz A definite popcorn picture, this farce of the "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" variety is funny but forgettable. How forgettable? Well, having seen it 40 years ago, I remembered a lot of it. Does that make it a good film? No. Does that make it funny? Definitely! Famous car racers from around the world get together for an unofficial and unauthorized race cross country, chased by the law, and outwitting them at every turn. Sound like "Smokey and the Bandit", which came out the following year? Well, close, unique enough to stand on its own.This features a huge cast of familiar and not so familiar faces, each getting moments to get funny moments or outwit the law or the other racers. Michael Sarrazin is the official lead, racing out of a boring budget meeting when the "gumball" message comes his way. Raul Julia gets to steal the most scenes as an Italian lothario who has very unique ways of making passes. Harvey Jason is the Inspector Clouseau like motorcycle driver, cursed from the start. Soap diva Susan Flannery follows her fiery jump from "The Towering Inferno" as one of two women drivers, but really doesn't do much but look blonde for the camera. J. Pat O'Malley is one of two British drivers, a lot long in the tooth, but still biting and gnawing.Of course there are others, but I can only mention Norman Burton as the cop out to stop them, and looking like the coyote to the rest of the driver's road runners. It's the cartoonish look and theme of the film that makes me rate it lower than I actually enjoyed it, but it does have more laughs for its absurdities. I also just love the bouncy score, usage of location footage (obviously Manhattan on an early Sunday morning) and some references that only road travelers with appreciate.

Tweekums When bored executive Michael Bannon utters the word 'Gumball' various people across the United States drop whatever they are doing and head for New York City. They are all going to take part in the highly unofficial and highly illegal Gumball Rally; a race from New York to Long Beach, California. With the exception of one man on a motorcycle each team is made up of two drivers in a car; mostly high performance sports cars but also a van, a Rolls Royce and a fake police car; the only rule to the race is that there are no rules! Not everybody is there to enjoy the event; Lt. Roscoe, a California policeman, is determined to arrest as many of the drivers as he can... he just has to catch them first. Not all of the competitors will make it to California; in fact some of them won't get out of New York and those that do make it will have to go through various scrapes involving the police, other competitors, a motorcycle gang and even a flock of butterflies! This film isn't chock full of A-list actors, the only ones I recognised were Gary Busey and Raul Julia, however everybody performed well and because of the lack of big names it was hard to guess who would get to the end and who would drop out near the start. The race itself had plenty of hilarious incidents and as the drivers approached the end it actually got fairly tense as the viewer wills their personal favourite to win; my personal favourite was Lapchick the Mad Hungarian motorcyclist... he was hilarious! Filmed long before CGI the stunts are all real and for the most part performed by the actors making it seem far more real than more modern films where the director would no doubt give in to the temptation of adding lots of CGI explosions and crashes! The premise of an unofficial race had been done before and has been done again since but this is one of the best examples of the genre and because it contains no offensive material it can be enjoyed by people of all ages.

Jim_Gillespie This is a film about driving fast cars, fast. There's enough plot to keep your interest, but not so much that it gets in the way of the action.The tone of the film isn't exactly tongue in cheek, but there's enough humour to be entertaining without really turning it into a comedy.One of my favourite things about this film is the soundtrack, which lets the music of the engines set the mood. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that one scene features a Ferrari Daytona being driven full-throttle through the deserted streets of New York City, with the wail of the engine reverberating from the skyscrapers.The standard of acting is high; the stars for me (apart from the cars) are Raul Julia and Gary Busey as two of the more flamboyant characters. And let us not forget Lapchik, the Mad Hungarian. Well, you don't get normal people participating in endurance events on 350cc two-stroke motorcycles!