Rudy Russo (Kurt Russel) is a used car salesman in a lot right across the road from another used car lot, a much more successful one, run by Mr. Roy Fuchs (sounds like 'Fukes' by the way, played by Jack Warden), the much more successful of the two Fuchs brothers. The other Fuchs brother, Luke (also Warden), is on much harder times, and with a heart condition. Russo wants to just raise enough money so his handsome mug can get into a state senator position- he already has the printout made up of his profile in the position- but his hopes are curtailed briefly with the near-sudden death of Luke from a heart attack (a sabotage, to be sure, but just one of many).
The way to fight back: he and his crew, Jeff (Graham) and Jim (McRae) film crazy commercials that cut into special events, like football games and Jimmy Carter's address to the nation. A big hit, sure, but then what about Roy's 'who-do-you-think-your-fooling' vendetta, with the reappearance of Luke's daughter Barbara (Harmon) in the mix? It's this set-up, more or less, which makes up the wonderfully nutty atmosphere of Used Cars, which is maybe more outrageous, and maybe just as funny, as other notorious comedies of 1980 (Airplane and Caddyshack namely, though Blues Brothers still slightly takes the cake with the predilection for wild car stunts). Zemeckis and Bob Gales' screenplay is about as savage satirically as an episode of South Park, or even Network, as it views this world of desperate, mean, and crude car salesman with an appropriate amount of cynicism.
While there's also the exuberance and wild adventure quality to the picture that one sees in a lot of Zemeckis's work as a director, it's just fun to see him go for broke, or go past points I'd reckon he'd go for (or hoped he would go for if he had the cojones, which here he definitely does), like with the filming of the commercials (first one more zany, the second probably funnier as Jeff dons a good-old-boy get up and shoots at/explodes some cars and Jim. Beneath the fun, Zemeckis doesn't want the audience to forget what this group is in: pure, American bull-s***, some of it of the raunchy, all-in-good-fun-and-profit kind like the late Luke Fuchs' ilk, and meaner and nastier with Roy Fuchs.
Taking aside the given shallow romantic sub-plot, barely revisited by film's end, or the threat of the climax running off the rails of it being like some crazy late 70s-early 80s send up of an old Western, there's a fantastic cast here for this great script. Russell, often donning a very short tie and polka-dot suit, and with that grin and look like the most atypical of swindlers, and he exudes so much charm and sleaziness that he can turn to one or the other or both on a dime, making it a rare comic powerhouse not to be found much elsewhere in his career (the Carpenter flicks are another matter). Also a lot of fun are Jack Warden and Jack Warden, putting in Roy Fuchs a bonafide antagonist with a full-blown two-dimensional character (make that one and a half dimensional, today's your lucky day folks!) Also, there's Graham, who is a really cool surprise- on top of this with his obscure turn in Home Movies from the same year- as the other dealer, who stoops so low as to use his dog's presumed death to sell a station wagon. Hell, there's even a wacko judge late in the film that's a total hoot.
It's very quotable ("Margaret, let's take a look under the hood, shall we?"), it takes itself only so much seriously that we can get invested in the story, and its level of raunch is still high enough, and hilarious enough, to get get the likes of morning DJ shock-jocks laughing about some of its classic scenes today. It's so unlikely, but it might just be one of Zemeckis's best, a small tour-de-force early in a career that would otherwise be (fun/sometimes great) blockbusters and practically always chock-full of special effects.
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