The Cannonball Run

The highway is alive with the sound of a loud musical score, spectacular car crashes, pursuits, sudden breakdowns and jokes, practical and impractical. Some of it is ingenious, and all of it is breathless...The Cannonball Run is inoffensive and sometimes funny. Because there are only a limited number of variations that can be worked out on this same old highway race, don't bother to see it unless you're already hooked on the genre. Read full review

What saves the movie is its relaxed sense of self-awareness. Reynolds all but winks at the audience with his collection of Dick Dastardly sneaks and dodges, but holds onto that winning, hangdog warmth that got him to the top of the pile in the seventies. Read full review

Cross-country race of the title comes off as almost entirely incidental to the star turns. Overall effect is akin to watching the troupe take a vacation. Read full review

Looks like something knocked off on rest days from Smokey and the Bandit II. The last five minutes, when they show out-takes of flubbed lines, etc, are hysterical. The rest is strictly for those willing to pay for a series of TV chat show performances. Read full review

A truly stupid film based on what should have been a surefire hit - a cross-country car race. Too many stars spoil the action, including Burt Reynolds, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. [19 June 1981, p.2-8]

With a plot stolen from THE GUMBALL RALLY (1976) and CANNONBALL (1976), this wholly derivative car-chase movie provides a flimsy excuse for good ol' boy Burt Reynolds to cavort on-screen with a cast that's chock-full of familiar faces. Read full review

Criticizing it is like spitting in the wind, but at the risk of sounding like the spoilsport villain of the piece (a snippety liberal Washington bureaucrat, wouldn't you know), there's a smug, bully-boy spirit underneath this supposedly merry romp. The message is Go for It, and the theme song tells us 'Youv'e gotta have a dream to, make a dream come true," but what have our dreams come to? Breaking the 55-mph speed limit? In this movie, paradise is being able to land a Piper Cubin a busy city street to pick up another six-pack. Unfettered individualism has come to this: drive hard and carry a big Schlitz. [13 July 1981, p.81]

Farrah Fawcett offers to this corrupt "entertainment" a small measure of the fresh innocence Marilyn Monroe used to bring to her movies; watching her work under these circumstances is like watching a maiden being thrown to Moloch. [22 June 1981]

The Cannonball Run is an abdication of artistic responsibility at the lowest possible level of ambition. In other words, they didn't even care enough to make a good lousy movie. Read full review

Content to pick up where the skid marks from "Smokey and the Bandit II" left off, The Cannonball Run quickly establishes itself as an aggressive shambles, the latest exercise in amateurism from facetious professionals. [20 June 1981, p.B1]