Cannonball Run II (1984)

Purely Joyful Movie!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Cannonball Run II (1984) 1/2 (out of 4) Incredibly lazy and rather pointless sequel has J.J. McClure (Burt Reynolds) and various others back and competing in another race from the West coast to the East coast.Somehow, THE CANNONBALL RUN turned out to be a huge hit so a sequel was put into production and it's amazingly just as dull as the first film. Also rather amazing is the fact that they managed to get even more famous faces to appear in this thing including Frank Sinatra who would appear in a theatrical movie for the last time. That's right, the great Sinatra ending his theatrical career on CANNONBALL RUN II. How does that happen? Was he bored? Did he need the money? Doing it as a favor?CANNONBALL RUN II is pretty much the same movie as the first, although we do get a few new actors to appear here including Telly Savalas as a gangster, Shirley MacLaine as a nun, Richard Kiel as Jackie Chan's assistant and there's also Sid Caesar, Catherine Bach, Tim Conway, Don Knotts, Tony Danza, Ricardo Montalban, Jim Nabors, Charles Nelson Reilly, Henry Silva, Doug McClure, Abe Vigoda and I've already mentioned Sinatra. Reynolds basically sleepwalks through the film and every once in a while smacks Dom DeLuise. Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. easily steal the film and thankfully they're given a bigger part than the previous movie.As I said, this is a pretty horrible movie as was the first one but with so many stars it's hard not to recommend this to film buffs. As awful as the movie is and as unfunny as it is, there's still something mildly (and painfully) amusing getting to see so many famous faces in one picture. It's really too bad that the filmmakers didn't try making a better movie though.

This film is a mess from start to finish without the pretty girls and the nice cars.Yes, there was Jackie Chan and Doug McLure and Richard Keil, but they had nothing to offer the film as well as Catherine Back or Marilou Henner.This is simply a whole bunch of actors put onto a set or site with little to offer the film in any context aside of making some dumb ass comments and smiling and that's about all.The first one wasn't to good and this one is even worse.Thin plot with little to support it.The race is boring, the back story is boring, even the fact that nobody knows who wins is a real stinker.It's a letdown with a bunch of names heading this POS.

Truly one of the greatest American films of the 20th Century. Superior comedic timing, wit, intelligence, chemistry-- a poignant social commentary on the conspicuous consumption of the mid-1980s. Hilarity only surpassed by its taut direction, superior pacing and production value, the likes of which had been unseen since Battleship Potemkin or 2001.The editing on this masterpiece (by William Gordean, famous for his genre-defining work on Tank Girl-- yes, that William Gordean) exceeds brilliance. How did they get it to look like Frank Sinatra was really in those scenes? How? How? Magic, my friend. Hollywood Magic. To think that in 1984 this film was overlooked by the Academy for the likes of trivial, petulant "movies" like The Killing Fields and Amadeus is the greatest tragedy in cinematic history. Shame on you, Oscar. Shame. On. You.

I wouldn't even bother commenting on the execrable cesspool of a film if its very existence didn't offend me.I hated this film. Hated it to a degree that I cannot even find the words to express myself. This is literally (and I do mean literally; this is not hyperbole) the low point of western civilization since the Spanish Inquisition.I enjoy a goofy Saturday afternoon or late night insomnia movie like anyone. I even enjoy bad movies if they are bad in a charming or kitschy way. What really makes this movie offense and vulgar is the sense of smug satisfaction of the giant ensemble cast.One of the worst feelings you can experience is embarrassment for another person, and this movie is, from beginning to end, a combination of feeling embarrassed for everyone involved coupled with insult and outrage. The idea that someone would find this worth watching is insulting. The idea that such a thing as this movie should even exist on a roll of film somewhere is offensive. I will have trouble sleeping knowing that somewhere within one thousand miles of me, some unclean television sits that once showed even a split second of this film.Quite literally, you, who are reading this comment, could have made a better film if I handed you a home video camera and shoved you out into the desert, then kneecapped you and left you for dead without water so that all you could film was the meager piece of ground you were capable of crawling across.I am wounded psychologically from having to sit through the sight of Burt Reynolds, Sammy Davis, and Dom DeLuise in drag.I could go cast member by cast member here, each of whom should be ashamed of themselves to this day and should be made to atone for their sins before a public tribunal of fire and pitchforks and angry mobs. All of my political principles go out the door when it comes to this movie - I want to see someone hanged, publicly and brutally, for bringing this abomination of a film into existence. I want to go Jacques deMolay on the whole cast. Forget dreading Friday the 13th; we should all rue the day this film was released, instead.I am permanently and incurably scarred by having to look at cars in this movie from the worst era for car design in the auto industry's history. What in God's name were people thinking in the 1980s - about EVERYTHING? The Mitsubishi in particular is one of the most shameful and odious pieces of machinery I have ever had the misfortune of laying my eyes on. I have yet to encounter anything, for example, in the dark recesses of the internet, so thoroughly offensive as the vehicles in this miserable "film." This is a movie about a race; the least they could have done is found some decent cars rather than relying on the miserable, unclean, blasphemous detritus of the era. The cars and Burt Reynold's mustache in this film are an affront to God and humanity. Each should be punished severely and swiftly. I want to hear someone scream.This is a movie full of people very amused with themselves with zero regard for the audience. The contempt for the audience is palpable. Not a single shred of effort was made - this is Burt and Dom partying on someone else's dollar, and the film itself equates to abuse and trauma. Not a single idea here is new - simian (literally) humor, dressing people up in drag, stereotypes, and a bunch of unlikely and trite crashes and disasters evoke nothing so much as Stalin era gulags and syphilis experiments.I hate this movie. Hate everything about it. Hate its presumptuousness, hate every actor who appeared for appearing in it. The entire acting career of everyone involved here should be completely discredited simply by virtue of appearing in this film. I want to see people kicked out of SAG, blacklists, exile, and angry mobs rampaging through the streets of Beverly Hills or Malibu or wherever these people live. I want to see tribunals and fire and primitive religious symbols and hooded men with axes.I will never be the same again, and I curse the day I saw this film.I have seen many movies, and this, I have to say, is the worst movie ever made. I am an enthusiastic and radical opponent of censorship but I make an exception for this witless, charmless, unfunny, vacuous disgrace of a film. Every copy in existence should be hunted down and burned, and any note of its existence should be wiped out of film guides and so on under penalty of death. When this campaign ends, we should start history over with Year 1. History should be rewritten, exactly as it happened, minus the existence of this film. Penalties should be doled out. We are talking stretch racks and iron maidens and bamboo under fingernails.I HATE THIS MOVIE.