Hit and Run

This film is about a woman who has to go to Los Angeles for an interview. She runs into all sorts of trouble along the drive by her boyfriend.

"Hit and Run" is a comedy that combines comedy, some action and lots of cars. The prevailing mood of the film is very lighthearted, and the on screen couple is convincing. I can see how Charlie really cares for Annie with his dedication to taking Annie to her job interview. The incompetent cop is funny, and Bradley Cooper's thug character is funny as well. I am impressed by how, in the middle of all the mess, the directors still manage to throw in subplots about anti-homophobia and political correctness. I am also impressed by how many gay subplots get mingled in a movie with cool car swerves. "Hit and Run" is a comedy that is relatively different compared with the rest.

I don't often write reviews so I'll keep this short. I watched this expecting nothing more than something to waste a couple of hours.It ended up being a real fun couple of hours though. Clever script work..great character chemistry & fantastic musical score.I watched this with my wife who is very hard to please and she was also pleasantly surprised. I'm not saying this should win any awards but I am saying for those of you who don't take every film you watch too seriously .. it's a pretty cool little movie . Dax Shepard should give himself a pat on the back for this.For a movie with a small budget it manages to assemble a great cast and give more bang for your buck than many big studios deliver.

If I really paid attention to some stuffy movie critics I'd probably never see another movie in my life. Reviews riddled with technical jargon like screenplay this, and protagonist that bore me immensely when I just want to know, "will I regret paying $6-12 for the movie?".

With that being said let me tell you where I am coming from, the perspective of a good ole regular 30 year old black lady who watches more television then they should, and enjoys going to the movies at noon because at that time I don't have to worry about some jack ass propping their feet on the back of my chair. (and I can lay down across 3 seats).

Now to the task at hand, what did I think about Hit & Run? I thought is was a good movie, I was entertained and did not regret purchasing the movie ticket.

OK, Whats the Movie About?

Charlie is a self-named member of the witness protection program, hiding out in a small rural town where he enjoys a simple life of love, and days spent worrying over his buffoonish handler, Randy (Tom Arnold). Charlie's happy world begins to crack when Annie is offered a job developing her own curriculum at a university in Los Angeles – the home of Charlie's criminal past, and a lot of bad people who want to get even with him.

Trying to prove his love, Charlie dusts off his bad boy muscle car and scoops Annie for a high-speed run to her LA job interview. But when Annie's jealous ex-boyfriend Gil (Michael Rosenbaum) tries to undermine the happy exodus, he unwittingly brings down all the wrong kind of heat on the situation. Before long, Charlie and Annie's road trip is a high-speed chase, complete with shootouts, buried treasure, and…a dune buggy.

Dax Shepard is funny to me, and so is Kristen Bell. The fact that Dax and Kristen are a couple made their characters Charlie and Annie in the movie have a charming chemistry that you can only get by smashing (having sex) in real life.

Being a lover of classic cars just seeing that classic Lincoln rev around spoke to my soul.

Dax wore rugged, outlaw, bad-ass with a gentle side, pretty well. So well that he transcended from this lanky quirky white guy, to "hey, how you doin". Also, This movie just made it official that it's impossible for Bradley Cooper to be unattractive, even with a dredlock wig, and some played out Oakley's, we was still looking' good.

Yada yada yada yada...blah blah blah blah.... I like the movie.

While shopping at my local Best Buy, I saw a copy of Hit and Run sitting on the shelf and I just decided to give it a try. I had nothing to lose and nothing to really fear. I figured it would be a light comedy with a lot of action to hold my attention for a good 90 minutes. I came home, pressed play, and watched it.

I don't really know how I feel about it.

Its not a bad movie, per se. I certainly didn't have a bad time. I was just puzzled at what I had just watched. Its a gooey rom-com with a few intense car chase sequences, peppered with raunchy dialog. Just... so weird! I'll give credit to Dax Shepard for making a totally original slant on an otherwise overdone plot line.

But then, once you get past the plot, it gets weirder. The acting, for the most part, is decent. But sometimes, it gets downright terrible. Take for instance, Tom Arnold. He literally shouts his entire dialog and spends most of the movie running wildly around screen with a gun in his hand. Why? I have no idea. Were they going for absurdist humor with that character? or was Tom Arnold just coked up? Whatever the reason, I grew to hate his character... a lot.

Then, literally, for no reason whatsoever, we get two scenes involving the main characters stumbling into an elderly orgy. What on god's green earth was that all about? Its as if the movie was spliced together with outtakes from a Sacha Baron Cohen movie, and they figured it would be so shocking, that it just had to be in the movie for a good laugh. It just sat there, dead on screen, in its wrinkly birthday suit. I didn't laugh.

Alright, enough with the questions. Lets get down to business. I thought the movie potentially worked and I did laugh more times than I ever thought I would. There is some really funny stuff in here, and its worth checking out to catch them all. I liked Dax Shepard, considering that he was channeling an Owen Wilson type performance. Kristen Bell is always a pleasure to watch watch on screen. We also get a delightfully bizarre performance from Bradley Cooper that entertained me a whole lot. Especially the scene at the supermarket... what an absolutely fantastic scene that was.

All in all, Hit and Run is hit and miss, and definitely surreal at times. But not a bad outing at the movies.

No this isn't as mediocre as you're thinking. It isn't. No it's not just another cheesy Hollywood comedy with dense jokes that's all about car-oriented action scenes and a pretty girl. I for example know nothing about cars and don't appreciate by the number American comedies and I really enjoyed this. If anything the title does the film no favors.

Dax Shepard, the male lead, actually does surprisingly well as a writer and director. Better than you'd think. In one word, this comedy has great 'balance'. The humor is centered a lot around contemporary social issues like political correctness and its abuse, and Shepard gives in a really good shift of managing to expose the silliness of the whole debate while not really piking any side outright and juggles well with both positions in a way that's properly comedic and fun. The character played by Bradley Cooper is characteristically hilarious in that same sense, he's this tree-hugging eco-friendly extremist psycho who acts as a spoof and as proper plot material at the same time.

Some scenes are genuinely funny, a couple proper hilarious, and all in all it's very well paced, very well constructed, dialog as explained is witty and balanced (not too cute, not too thick), the characters are funny and believable despite being like comic book characters, and there's good attention to detail, everything is spelled out or made totally obvious.

Very pleasantly surprised: 7.5/10.