Cannonball Run (VCD) (China Version) VCD

The unselfconsciousness here borders on unconsciousness. Dom DeLuise is laughing gas wafting up Burt Reynold's nostrils and if you don't get enough of them cracking each other up stay tuned for the end credit outtakes (the inspiration for Jackie Chan's similar practice and shamefully removed from the end of Cannonball Run II).

Burt and Dom introduce themselves as the big brother (dai lo) and Kato who operate at the Bund in Shanghai (scene of a famous Chow Yun-fat TVB show). People wonder about triad membership and confess that Bruce Lee is their hero. At one point Farrah Fawcett exclaims, "It's going to be more fun than La Boheme!"

Beyond the obvious delights of seeing things in Cantonese, there's Jackie Chan in the first movie with Michael Hui playing Japanese racers: cooped up in a super-Subaru like red eyed space invaders zazzing along miles of desolate blacktop on their way to Roswell. Part II loses Michael Hui but gains giant Richard Kiel (Jaws from Moonraker), and whereas the action is bigger and funnier in Part II, Part I pits Jackie against biker icon, Peter Fonda.

The plot is more a collection of loose incident: JJ (Burt Reynolds) and Dom DeLuise (joined by his superhero alter ego Captain Chaos) join in the Cannonball Run, an illegal cross-country race. In Part I they compete against Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin (obviously drunk), Roger Moore pretending to be James Bond in a powder blue tuxedo, and two women who wear peelaway jumpsuits. Boom mics drop into frame, cars are needlessly undercranked and the sets are built with all the care and feeling of cardboard boxes, but still it works.

Part II brings back the Sheik from Part I (Sheik?). Youngest son of the Falafel family he is sent to win the second Cannonball Run. He shamed his family by losing in Part I, but despite being the son of his dad's ugliest wife he's the only son with a driver's license and so off he goes. More celebrities are in Part II with Telly Savalas, Don Knotts and Tony Danza (partnered with an ancient orangutan) all strutting their stupid stuff. The subtitles here reach their nadir when a pilot in a biplane starts singing "Deutschland Uber Alles" something I don't think he sang in the American version. There's a monkey that drives a car, even more of Dom DeLuise as Captain Chaos, and an animation scene in which the registration pins are painfully evident.

The closest to a Hong Kong comedy that American movies ever got, this Yankee mo lei tau is addictive fun that's best summed up by an errant subtitle. In one scene with no one onscreen and no dialogue apropos of nothing the subtitle appears: "What the hell is going on here?" Exactly.

by Grady Hendrix