Cannonball 2

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...

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.

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.

It was not all bad, but to completely honest I thought "Speed Zone" was a better sequel to the "Cannonball Run" than this movie was as this movie was almost the exact same movie only with inferior parts to it. Throw in a unfunny kidnapping plot for the only real difference in the movie and you have your sequel that came out three years after the original. That is another sad thing about this sequel, it came out long after the first one and they still went in exactly the same way. Burt Reynolds, Dom Delouise, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin are back along with a few others from the original. In though are a lot more B ranking actors. Roger Moore out, Richard Kiel in (the guy who played the villain Jaws in "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Moonraker"). Adrien Barbeau out and two chicks I do not know in. Farrah Fawcett out and two others I do not care for in. Jim Nabors and Tony Danza in, which is definitely not a good thing. Ambulance that was a great idea out and for some reason a military car and uniforms in. That one made no sense they would have been better off just using the ambulance again. The plot is the same, race across the country, the only difference being the guys trying to catch the sheik character to hold him for ransom and this does not stay original as it basically sets up another brawl like that found at the last part of the first movie. After this fight though the race just about is over with no fanfare. Just a pointless sequel, that has a few humorous moments, the best being the scene with Tim Conway and Don Knotts.

Once again Hal Needham brings together a half respectable cast like in the first Cannonball movie, but again forgot to bring a script. The mad-cap lunacy is still here, as are the cheap gags and stunts, but now it seems strange that all of this actually worked in the first movie, because it sure doesn't here. I found Burt and Dom laughing at their own jokes more than I did. It's no wonder Reynolds' career took a dive around this time if he was starring in films as dire as this.

The usual suspects are here while a few have (sensibly) dropped out of the race. Catherine Bach and Susan Anton are attractive enough, but don't quite cut it like Adrienne Barbeau and Co. did, and all they had to do was smile and flash their t**s once in a while. Richard Kiel is an unusual partner for Jackie Chan, but the little and large pairing works well. Chan also helped by bringing along his own stuntmen for the fight scenes, and it shows. Shirley MacLaine seems oddly at home with her trashy lines, while Telly Savalas fittingly over does things but is ultimately wasted in the movie, the same could be said for most of the cast. Frank Sinatra's inter-cut scenes are sickeningly shoddy and make the film appear as amateurish as it undeniably is.

If you did like the first Cannonball Run, (and there are a few!) you'll undoubtedly be disappointed with this outing, while those who didn't enjoy the first movie will no doubt detest the sequel.