bkoganbing 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.

Smile_U_SOB This film has no race and no chase. Okay there is a race but it has really nothing to do with the movie. The first film of course is all about "The Cannonball Run", which is an illegal race from coast to coast, written by Brock Yates who, along with director Hal Needham, actually drove an ambulance across America - and it's Yates who invented the Cannonball Run. In the original, Burt and Dom use the very same ambulance; now we have a sequel which isn't written by Yates, and is as bad a sequel as I've yet to witness on screen. As mentioned, the actual coast to coast race has little to do with anything this time around. Instead there's a lame subplot about mobsters trying to hijack Jamie Farr's character, an Arab with tons of oil money who this time around is funding the prize at the finish line. So basically this is a comic mobster film with a bunch of actors thrown in who are driving cars. Jack Elam, who is incredible in the first film, is thrown in as wallpaper. Burt and Dom are horrible and lazy; you can tell they were just doing the film for a paycheck. Shirley Maclaine and Marilu Henner play actresses dressed as nuns, and we have to sit through people doing double-takes as these impostor penguins curse in public. Boring. Horrible. Jackie Chan is even ruined this time around. In the first film Roger Moore plays a guy who thinks he's Roger Moore, and thus he drives a gadget filled car, ala Bond. This time around, Chan, who had some gadgets of his own in the original, has even more gadgets as he's basically replacing the Moore/Bond character from the original. And his driver is Richard Kiel, best known as Bond nemesis "Jaws". Chan's car even goes under water, just like Bond's car in "The Spy Who Loved Me" (which featured Kiel). Other contestants include an ape teamed up with Tony Danza. All I have to ask Tony is: Didn't "Going Ape" teach you not to work with primates? Jamie Farr's character is ruined because he's too involved; his sheik was far better as a cameo in the original. And Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr are totally wasted this time, disguised as cops instead of priests, and they don't even get into any trouble. Burt and Dom are dressed as soldiers; Burt is a general and Dom is a private. They pick up Jim Nabors along the way, as "Private Lyle" (guess what they're spoofing here?) and his cameo is as useless as an air conditioner in an igloo. It doesn't feel as if there is any "need" to win the race for any of the characters. You forget there is even a race at all. Man, I tell you, this is one of the worst sequels - if not the worst sequel ever, ever, ever made. Avoid it at all costs. Even as a kid I knew it was chum.

bob the moo Having shamed his family by failing to run the original Cannonball Run, The Sheik is sent back to America by his father to restage the race with $1,000,000 of the King's money. Spreading the word brings out most of the previous competitors as well as some new racers as well as some new trouble –Don Canneloni's son (Don Don) is failing in his new business venture and the Don has sent some men to sort out his debtors, namely one Morris Fenderbaum. When the Don's men catch up with Fenderbaun they learn of the Cannonball Run and decide that they will make some money by kidnapping the Sheik during the race.A quiet night in with a few glasses of wine meant that somehow Cannonball 2 became a viable proposition but sadly, regardless of the influence of libation, this was a pretty poor film that didn't have much in the way of entertainment value. If you are the sort of person that thinks Smokey & The Bandit 3 is the height of cinematic art then you'll probably love CR2 but for the majority of us, this is just a collection of noisy scenes, hung together with the most basic of plots and a load of stars having fun; or at least I hope they were having fun because I certainly didn't. The basic plot is used to produce a few fights, some fast cars, a little bit of cleavage and a whole load of not much else.The comedy is of the most basic sort and the cast do seem to be having fun with all their mates but this does not make their performances any good. Reynolds just sleeps through it in the way he always does, while anyone hoping that Dom DeLuise will be good for laughs deserve everything they get in life. Martin and Davis Jr seem happy for the paycheck but really you get the feeling that they are crying inside. Likewise Savalas and MacLaine are much better than this, while Rocco, Silva etc all deserve a damn good kicking for this mockery of their most famous roles. Elam, Danza, Farr, Chan and Kiel all fill the screen but at least Montalban and McClure are good value (although that may be less to do with their ability and more to do with Star Trek 2 and the Simpsons spoof respectively).Overall a very, very basic comedy that does very little worth seeking out. The stars all appear to be enjoying themselves and it is really just as well that somebody is because the majority of viewers won't be. In its defence though, if you're watching this film then what did you expect – although that doesn't really excuse any of this nonsense.

[email protected] The guy who wrote the review, "Danza Vs Orangutan" got it completely right, except I think the question isn't whether or not the Orangutan is a better actor than Danza, it's whether the Orangutan in the more highly evolved. Again, Danza Loses.This is a crummy, stinking horrible film that is great after the second six pack on a Friday night. I rated it "5" because it's technically a "0," but it is as big a laugh as a real "10" film made by sapient beings. If you claim to be a bad movie buff but you haven't stepped in this pile of excrement yet, you haven't been trying.My suggestion: see it. Sure, the wince factor is high here, but the movie will certainly make you feel a LOT better about yourself...you know you're smarter and cooler than anyone associated with this gobbler.