Metacritic reviews

It takes a little while to get going, but once it does, it never lets up, proving a cathartic anti-authority picture driven (both literally and figuratively) by Howard.

In a way, it's an archetypal car-chase flick, with next to no plot and a lot of cars flying through the air, engines roaring, tires roasting, sheetmetal bending.

Griffith's directorial debut - after 20 years of scripting for Corman - does deliver the expected race/chase/demolition derby mayhem, but every time the focus switches to Ron Howard's adolescent romantic worries, it stalls.

An enjoyable but mindless hour and a half of car wrecks that span several states.

Though some of the chase sequences aren't bad, it's pretty silly. [27 Jun 2002, p.22]