Coast to Coast

Spotty road-comedy has Dyan Cannon escaping from the booby hatch and hitching a ride with trucker Robert Blake. He's rather charmed by her after the usual hysterical preliminaries; seems she's not so crazy after all, and is on the run from bounty hunters hired by her nefarious husband. Cannon's natural effervescence is always a treat, and Blake is surprisingly warm and personable, but Stanley Weiser's screenplay isn't much more than a doodle. Some big laughs, and it does improve after a very sloppy opening half-hour. Mario Tosi's vivid cinematography is very good, though Joseph Sargent handles the direction like a traffic cop. ** from ****

I never caught the beginning of this movie, but obviously Madie Levrington (Dyan Cannon) escapes from a New York state mental hospital where her husband Benjamin had her committed to avoid the trial of an expensive divorce. Madie hitches a ride back to California with Charles Callahan (Robert Blake), a debt-ridden trucker. He drives a GMC General, yellow maybe. Maybe they met in Kansas City or they stopped in Kansas City to pick up some cattle. They eventually fall in love. But Madie steals the truck, cattle and all, leaving Charles behind, to go to her home in California. Charles hitches a ride and eventually catches up with the truck. He climbs into the open-top cattle trailer. But he can't stop Madie from back there. "I hate cows!" he says. Madie reaches her husband's home. The prospects don't look good for Benjamin.

I saw this movie close to or when it actually first came out. I absolutely loved it. No it's not "deeep" lol, it is a great comic adventure with lots of quotable lines you may recognize but spoken by these characters in a selling performance. The supporting cast members are evil funny as they should be.

COAST TO COAST is an obscure big studio film few have seen or even heard of. It stars two actors who are short, jittery and have lotsa hair. In other words, it stars two Ewoks. OK, enough with the silliness. COAST TO COAST stars Robert Conrad and Dyan Cannon, who do look like Ewoks. Dyan does her usual nervous Blond ditz who talks a mile a minute, while Robert plays it light (for once) but is rarely convincing playing cute. Usually built like a Pit Bull, Conrad here looks chubby. His ultra tight jeans don't help dispel the weight gain.

The story is about a trucker who...stop it there. A trucker? Oh it's one of those road movies made during the CB trend of the 1970s. It's a trend that truly belongs in the 70s and will most likely never resurface again until the end of time. The film itself is harmless enough so there's no point of really trashing it but needless to say, it's not really good. The story is obvious, never convincing and the two stars are not interesting enough to carry an entire film, as lightweight as it is. The film is not on DVD yet. I watched on video. I doubt it'll ever make it on DVD in the near future.

As an overlooked movie when originally released, this is one of the better films to watch on video. It is also one of the films that gave HBO and the other movie networks great material to televise. Coast to Coast is a fun, timeless tale of two people out of their elements, bonding, and making the most of situations in the lighthearted, Hollywood manner everyone wishes could carryover in real life. This is a fancy feature to view along with Silver Streak and Mother, Jugs, and Speed. While it never reaches the violence displayed in those two pictures, Coast to Coast is a great flick to watch at home, on a date, or whenever you want to look at a film from the 1970s era.