Amazon.com Essentials:
This 1980 film by director Robert Zemeckis gives no indication
of things to come in his career
(Contact,
Forrest Gump), but
it is representative of a certain cynical humor he shared early on
with writer-partner Bob Gale. Kurt Russell and Jack Warden star in a
sketchy comedy about competing used-car salesmen who resort to
outrageous tactics to lure customers away from each other. The jokes,
like the characters, are intentionally recycled, self-conscious comic
fodder from a baby-boomer's lifetime (such as Gale's or Zemeckis's) of
immersion in pop culture. That makes Used Cars more pastiche
than original (the film's title itself suggests that), but as such it
has some good, if vaguely familiar, laughs in it. Russell,
particularly, is very funny as a practiced con man. --Tom
Keogh
