The Gumball Rally (1976) Maybe we find ourselves more forgiving and tolerant for stupid 1970's movies because of their benevolent, modest intentions.........
They didn't cost 200 millions dollars.........
They didn't drag on for a tortuous 2 and 3/4 hours.........
All their crazy stunts were done for real........not accomplished with the help of 537 digital artists from 6 different visual effects companies......
Slapped together quickly, they were populated by likable actors who easily transferred the good time they were having on to the screen..........(they weren't there to rack up a huge paycheck and kick off a franchise.....)
And concerning the fundamental stupidity of these films, they didn't flaunt it, celebrate it, or rub the audience's noses in it.........
Which brings us to the frivolous, happily senseless pleasures of "The Gumball Rally", one of the first of the cross-country road race comedies to hit the screen.......(if you don't count the bloated "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"......)
All that candy executive Michael Sarazin need do is murmur 'gumball' to the illegal race's participants and they're revving up their various high speed vehicles...........preparing for a no rules, burn-up-the-highway spin from New York City to Long Beach, California.
And that's the movie, folks......no need to explain much more. Directed by veteran stuntman Chuck Bail, the movie interrupts the comedy vignettes between the racers with duly spectacular crashes.........(we're especially fond of the one where a van packed to capacity with extra gasoline goes flying into a fireworks factory......)
Maybe not much of a film director, but Bail had few equals as a stunt supervisor of deliriously crazy mayhem.......(you can sample some of his superb work in the lunatic chases of "Freebie And The Bean" and the campus riots of "Getting Straight")
Plenty of fun along the way, too........Raul Julia as a speed demon Lothario who only slows his normal 130 MPH to seduce women by rolling toy cars across their naked bellies.......those two character actor treasures J.Pat 'O Mallley and Vaughn Taylor as senior racers.......the young Gary Busey amping up his soon to be trademarked madness........and the always apoplectic Normann Burton as the enraged cop chasing after the whole gang, with the same ill-tempered frustration he had with Sean Connery's Bond in "Diamonds Are Forever"......
Look we never claimed this movie re-invented the wheel.......it's just content to fling random wheels across the highway......and that's okay with the BQ.........
Even better......Dwayne Johnson, Vin Diesel, Mark Wahlberg and 700 green-screen effects are nowhere in sight......so 3 speedy stars (***) for the simple, dopey laughs in"The Gumball Rally"..........(and we pray nobody wants to remake it with the above-mentioned actors....)
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