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The Cannonball Run (1981) Starring Burt Reynolds, Farrah Fawcett, Adrienne Barbeau, Jackie Chan, Peter Fonda, Jack Elam, Dom Deluise, George Furth, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Bert Convy, Jamie Farr, John Fiedler, Bob Tessier, Johnny Yune, Terry Bradshaw, Bianca Jagger, Mel Tillis, Joe Klecko, Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder, Michael Hui, Rick Aviles, Warren Berlinger, Norman Grabowski, Alfie Wise, Simone Burton, Janet Woytak, Tara Buckman, Molly Picon, Susan McDonald, Grayce Spence, Lois Areno, Kathleen M.Shea, Laura Lizer Sommers, Linda McClure, Vickie Reigle, Finele Carpenter, Valerie Perrine.

Directed by Hal Needham.

Running time: 95 minutes

Rated: PG

Assorted oddballs enter a cross-country auto race. Included amongst them are two professional gamblers dressed as priests (Martin and Davis Jr), a corporate CEO motorcyclist (Convy), a randy Arab Sheikh (Farr), two buxom spandex clad women (Barbeau and Buckman). Our heroes JJ & Victor (Reynolds and Deluise) drive an ambulance to cultivate right of way and police indifference.

Not to be confused with the genuinely quirky and fun Cannonball (1976) directed by Paul Bartel, which had a similar premise but a completely different approach. One might see serious intent to evoke the humour of that title if there actually were any serious intent at all here. What this really is can be described as a bunch of 1970's kitsch celebrities doing a home movie that vaguely tells the story of an illegal road race. There are some bad one-liners, dumb sight gags, women wearing so much make-up they look like it was spread on with a putty knife, lots and lots of cleavage (featuring Playboy covermodel Vickie Reigle as a buxom carhop and Lois Hamilton) and cars crashing into stuff.

The braintrust behind this did not set out to make anything interesting or meaningful on purpose and did not make anything interesting or meaningful by accident. They just got a week's worth of Tonight Show guests, told them to have fun and made sure they got the shots in focus especially when corporate logos happen to have been in the background. The result is quite probably the most obscenely stupid, garish and rapacious cinematic production ever conceived in the history of Hollywood.

About the only thing that gives the storyline any semblance of sequence is the fact that it is a race. Good thinking! A race usually has a beginning and an end but bad movies do not necessarily have a coherent example of either.

There are various TV sitcom style moments in which the

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