Stroker Ace

You sort of have to like these Hal Needham/Reynolds movies to like this.

The plot is weak. The dialog is mildly amusing. I found the whole chicken sponsor thing pretty funny though.

Loni Anderson fans might enjoy her ridiculous role as the naive PR person for the chicken chain

There's cleavage shown from time to time which some will appreciate

I have read the book, and the movie is quite different than the book. The book is a series of stories, possibly tall tales, loosely based on the experiences of the writers in racing. It's mostly about sex, heavy drinking and wrecking/racing cars. I enjoyed it a lot. The book is better than the movie IMO

I think Nabors and Reynolds have some funny interactions.

Auto racing is rather limited, probably due to cost. But you do get to see some vintage cars and racing footage

Just remember this is a silly pointless movie, in the spirit of movies like Smokey and the Bandit and maybe you will enjoy it like I do

NASCAR driver Burt Reynolds signs a contract with Ned Beatty to drive his car and hates it. He also courts nice girl Loni Anderson and has an on-track rivalry with Parker Stevenson.

Burt Reynolds was a fine actor, but you'd never know it from his career choices. He passed on the Jack Nicholson role in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT because he had a handshake agreement with director Hal Needham to make this; it seems it didn't occur to him to ask Needham to wait. Instead he made this lazy movie, with no dramatic tension and no energy in the comedy bits. It looks like Needham assembled all his friends, made a movie, and cut in some race-track sequences, with no one putting in much effort to learn their lines. If you want to see Reynolds in a chicken suit, or Loni Anderson lying on a bed in her clothes, her eyes shut, and looking like a Barbie doll, this is the movie for you. Not for me.

Stroker Ace (Burt Reynolds) grew up with moonshining Seegles being chased by the cops in the backwoods. He is a reckless arrogant womanizing three-time NASCAR champ. Aubrey James (Parker Stevenson) is his ambitious young rival. Lugs (Jim Nabors) is his crew chief. He is taken with virginal Pembrook Feeney (Loni Anderson). She's Clyde Torkle (Ned Beatty)'s new employee. When Stroker loses his sponsor, he signs up with untrustworthy Fried Chicken king Torkle as The Fastest Chicken in the South. He grows to hate his contract and tries to get out of it.

This is Burt Reynolds at his most Burt Reynolds. As a kid, I didn't really mind the bad writing and didn't get some of the jokes. It wasn't my favorite racing movie but I didn't know the critical panning this received. I love Cannonball Run and I knew this is inferior. Watching it again recently gave me a few more problems. Loni is a big robotic problem. Her innocent act does not work. The writing is not that funny either. It's just a lot of camp from the cast. I don't actually hate this but it's not good.

When Bewitched was running on television half of the plots involved Darrin's job where he and Larry Tate every week contended with yet another egotistical company president. The plot of Stroker Ace hearkens back to those days of Bewitched and it has Burt Reynolds as a NASCAR driver doing everything possible to get out from under a contract with a sponsor who's a blithering idiot.

Although Burt certainly gets in his innings in Stroker Ace, especially seeing him in a chicken suit and driving his car in a race in one, the best one in Stroker Ace by far is Ned Beatty. Beatty got an Academy Award nomination for playing the all powerful, malevolent media mogul in Network. Here he takes the same character and plays it for laughs and he's absolutely hysterical. Beatty owns a fried chicken company and he could easily have been one of McMahon&Tate's clients from Bewitched.

If outrageous overacting lead by Ned Beatty isn't reason enough to watch Stroker Ace, than certainly the curvaceous Loni Anderson should do. Loni is giving out with her best Marilyn Monroe imitation as Beatty's advertising person who thinks that what Beatty is asking of Reynolds is tasteless and stupid. Of course she falls for Burt on the screen and in real life.

I'm not a NASCAR fan, but I don't think you have to be to watch Stroker Ace and enjoy it. I have however become a fan of the Professional Bull Riders in recent years and they have their sponsors set up in a similar fashion as does NASCAR for its various drivers. I don't think the PBR has any sponsors as outrageous as Ned Beatty. If this film was about the PBR I can just see Beatty insisting to Guilherme Marchi that he ride a bull in a chicken suit or something equally bizarre.

The film got bad reviews and I can't see why. It's not sophisticated comedy to be sure, but it's not all that bad. And Ned Beatty alone is worth seeing and appreciating Stroker Ace.

Burt Reynolds goes through the motions as an absurdly-named stock car driver in this dull, deeply unfunny 'comedy' directed by long-time buddy Hal Needham. Nonsensical plot concerns Reynold's efforts to get out of a sponsorship contract (what, he doesn't want to be on a competitive team?) while trying to woo Loni Anderson's PR flack/Sunday school teacher, over the course of a seemingly endless racing season.

Big hair, cornpone accents and superficial performances abound, with particularly annoying turns from Jim Nabors (as Reynolds' crew chief) and Ned Beatty (as a fried chicken magnate). Only potential points of interest are the period racing scenes (including some of the top NASCAR drivers), and the vast cleavage displayed in the few female roles: Anderson, Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson, Debbie Casperson and the legendary Linda Vaughn.