The Cannonball Run, released in 1981 was something of a sleeper hit. Following on from Burt Reynolds' enormously successful Smokey and the Bandit films, it was a fun packed roller coaster of car chases and cameos but above all it was funny, very funny in fact.
It wasn't a huge hit with the critics (these kinds of film never are) but the audience loved it and made it one of the top box office hits of the year and making over $160m in the US alone from a budget of just $16m
It certainly gave Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jnr, a final roar and cinematic high to end their long and illustrious careers on (although Dom DeLuise and Jack Elam steal the movie from everybody with their hilarious larger than life performances)
I can imagine that after the fantastic laugh a minute first movie, audiences must have been really excited to see the Cannonballers out on the road again. It's a shame therfore they decided to follow up the first movie with this terribly unfunny effort.
In fact you can almost feel the disappointment audiences of the day must have felt while watching it, as the movie that could have been so great, consistently fails at almost every opportunity.
Sure the car chases are there, the premise is the same but it just didn't gel as well. There is too much movie parody, with gimmick casting from The Godfather movies offering both an unsatisfying plot and some unconvincing villains, instead of the usual band of highway patrol Smokey's.
Dean and Sammy are criminally underused in this sequel although they did manage to convince fellow Rat Packers and long time collaborators Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine and Henry Silva to join in on the fun, but even the presence of these big guns, failed to give this film the extra sparkle it needed.
In the final scenes of the first movie, you can see the cast breaking up with laughter as they were having so much fun on set (Farrah Fawcett almost looks like she was in pain she was laughing so hard)
Sadly, there is none of that here.
The movie tries too hard to be funny by using jokes and characterisations that are not and you can visibly see the cast giving up halfway through knowing that their attempts to recapture the original magic was just not working.
It's a shame Dean, Sammy and Frank had to end their movie careers with such a foul tasting film in their mouths, especially as they could have ended for Dean and Sammy on such a high with the previous movie.
Stick with the original.. funny and memorable, avoid this one at all costs as it's memorable for an altogether different reason,
It wasn't a huge hit with the critics (these kinds of film never are) but the audience loved it and made it one of the top box office hits of the year and making over $160m in the US alone from a budget of just $16m
It certainly gave Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jnr, a final roar and cinematic high to end their long and illustrious careers on (although Dom DeLuise and Jack Elam steal the movie from everybody with their hilarious larger than life performances)
I can imagine that after the fantastic laugh a minute first movie, audiences must have been really excited to see the Cannonballers out on the road again. It's a shame therfore they decided to follow up the first movie with this terribly unfunny effort.
In fact you can almost feel the disappointment audiences of the day must have felt while watching it, as the movie that could have been so great, consistently fails at almost every opportunity.
Sure the car chases are there, the premise is the same but it just didn't gel as well. There is too much movie parody, with gimmick casting from The Godfather movies offering both an unsatisfying plot and some unconvincing villains, instead of the usual band of highway patrol Smokey's.
Dean and Sammy are criminally underused in this sequel although they did manage to convince fellow Rat Packers and long time collaborators Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine and Henry Silva to join in on the fun, but even the presence of these big guns, failed to give this film the extra sparkle it needed.
In the final scenes of the first movie, you can see the cast breaking up with laughter as they were having so much fun on set (Farrah Fawcett almost looks like she was in pain she was laughing so hard)
Sadly, there is none of that here.
The movie tries too hard to be funny by using jokes and characterisations that are not and you can visibly see the cast giving up halfway through knowing that their attempts to recapture the original magic was just not working.
It's a shame Dean, Sammy and Frank had to end their movie careers with such a foul tasting film in their mouths, especially as they could have ended for Dean and Sammy on such a high with the previous movie.
Stick with the original.. funny and memorable, avoid this one at all costs as it's memorable for an altogether different reason,