Carrera de locos parte II

In the future when film scholars ponder whether Tony Danza was a better actor than say, an orangutan, they may come across "Cannonball Run II" and feel great delight. The reason being that "Cannonball Run II" features scenes in which they can compare and contrast the thespian skills of both Danza and orangutan. For my money the orangutan wins easily. Beyond the Danza versus orangutan intrigue the film may fail to generate much interest for them. While the large cast seems to be having a blast hamming it up on the open road, the end result is that this movie is pure road kill for viewers. I've been in car accidents that are more fun than this flick.

Both Cannonball Run movies are films to totally relax and let your funny bone rule you. No plots that make any kind of coherent sense, just a whole lot of people getting a great chance to overact with gusto and abandon. And since Cannonball Run II just about tripled the number of name players who did walk ons, it could be considered triple the fun.

Folks like Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise who are the nominal stars, Jackie Chan, Jack Elam, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., and Jamie Farr make return appearances and a whole lot more get in on the fun.

Farr who is carrying the prize money as the fabulously wealthy hedonistic idiot son of an Arab sheik played here by Ricardo Montalban gets to be the target of some gangster heist when the wise guys find out what he's carrying. At that point the contentious rivalries cease among the Cannonballers as they band together against a common foe and to retrieve their prize money.

Along for the ride this time with Reynolds and DeLuise are a pair of ersatz nuns played by Shirley MacLaine and Marilu Henner. Martin and Davis now pretend to be cops instead of priests from the last film. They're the chief rivals of Reynolds and DeLuise. Telly Savalas does a great takeoff of his Kojak tough guy image on the other side of the law, Tim Conway and Don Knotts reunite as a pair of brain dead deputies. And Reynolds and DeLuise who pretend to be a general and his aide draft none other than Gomer Pyle on their 'top secret mission'.

Frank Sinatra even makes an appearance and it turns out that Cannonball Run II was the farewell big screen role for both he and Dino. As Dino says, he's royalty in America, surely in show business that's what he was.

Cannonball Run II which was starting to approach It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World in terms of casting funny people in it and Don Knotts and Sid Caesar are in both is just a film to turn off the gray cells and put the funny bone in hyper drive.

RELEASED IN 1983 and directed by Hal Needham, "Cannonball Run II" is a car chase comedy about a second Cannonball Run race from the West Coast to the East Coast. The teams include JJ & Victor (Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise), Blake and Fenderbaum (Dean Martin & Sammy Davis Jr.) with other teams involving Jackie Chan & Richard Kiel in a submersible Mitsubishi Starion and Mel Tillis & Tony Danza accompanied by an orangutan. There are at least a dozen other notable co-stars in various roles: Jamie Farr, Telly Savalas, Sid Caesar, Tim Conway, Foster Brooks, Ricardo Montalban , Charles Nelson Reilly, Don Knotts, etc.

This is a fun turn-off-your-brain flick with an incredible all-star cast that's worth the price of admission. Unfortunately, the script needed a rewrite with better jokes but the producers obviously didn't want to blow the money. As it is, too much of the humor falls flat, but "Cannonball Run II" is still leagues better than comparable junk like "Smokey and the Bandit Part 3" (1983). And there's a worthwhile sequence where Dom does an amusing Brando impersonation.

Moreover, the movie scores good marks on the female front with Catherine Bach jaw-dropping in form-fitting blue spandex during the first half, teamed with her Amazonian-ish partner Susan Anton (who's no slouch in the beauty department). Bach's buttocks looks like it was sculptured by God Himself. In addition, there's Marilu Henner and Shirley MacLaine, who catch a ride with JJ & Victor, masquerading as nuns before revealing their real identities. Maclaine was 48 during shooting but still had a great figure.

THE FILM RUNS 1 hour, 48 minutes and was shot in Nevada (Las Vegas, Henderson), Arizona (Tucson, Bisbee) and California (Redondo Beach).

GRADE: C

The first Cannonball Run was enjoyable enough, but this stinks so badly that you can smell it coming from a considerable distance.

Shoddy, disjointed & cheap-looking, this would fail to entertain a dimwit in a coma. Simply keep it on a loop on daytime TV and just watch the unemployment level drop.

Burt Reynolds must have known that this signalled the beginning of his cinematic hibernation period, whereas Sammy & Wino just go through the motions, trying to make the best of a script that was almost certainly ghost-written by one of the stars (the hairy, orange one)

Jackie Chan gets screwed-over again with another choppy fight scene set on sand (he always complains that it's impossible to 'take off' on the stuff), and consequently is much slower. Or is it just the case that they didn't under-crank the camera?

What can you say about a movie that has hardly any form, no pacing or sense of rhythm/humour? The climax of the movie was even forsaken in favor of a cheap laugh.

To perfectly illustrate the idiocy of the whole project, at one point the prize money of the Cannonball Run is raised from $1million to $2million which causes one dumb broad to exclaim "how many zeros is in that?"

More fun can be had from repeatedly banging a tea-tray on your head...

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.