pontiac-5 Reviews

Born to Race (1988)

Sort of a budget Days Of Thunder

[5/10 · 6 September 2022]

Had it not come first I would suspect this was inspired by Days of Thunder, but it's two years earlier and appears to be on a lower budget, with many in the cast coming from television roles. George Kennedy is perhaps the biggest name actor. The story is so-so and kind of predictable, down on luck race team on the verge of making it big crosses paths with a young woman engineer who has plans to greatly improve race engines, which are stolen along with her. Oddly they're in the second tier Busch Grand National series rather than the then Winston Cup series, but it's nice to see clips of those cars in action. Humpy Wheeler and David Pearson have cameos. Appears some of it was filmed inside the DiGard racing shops (if you're paying attention in one scene the logo appears on a door).

It's also clear the editing people had never actually seen a race, as they cut in several scenes of spins that would have brought out a caution but no caution comes out. Perhaps in the interest of time, race starts are skipped past for only a few minutes of race action at the end.

The soundtrack isn't bad, it's pure 1980s.

Is it really terrible, no, I found I enjoyed it, but if you're not a race fan you probably won't like it as much.

I found it on the internet, has it ever been released to home video?

NCIS: New Orleans: See You Soon (2018) Season 5, Episode 1

Somewhat predictable

[5/10 · 26 September 2018]

While this is not generally a bad show, the actor who is executive producer in a life or death situation is not as drama inducing as it could be because you know there is no way he dies. I marked for spoiler, but come on.

The other problem with this episode is when Pride is in limbo, talking to "The Angel" all I could picture is they should have had Dean Stockwell play this role and keep calling Pride "Sam" and telling him to take the leap home. As a result I couldn't take it as seriously as intended.

All-American Co-Ed (1941)

It's not bad if you take it for what it is.

[6/10 · 14 June 2010]

After watching this on one of the local PBS station's digital channels and reading through other reviews I felt I should add one as well. I found this movie to be very funny, and not all in ways it was intended to be. I generally don't care for musicals, yet I enjoyed this movie.

Simply because it's old and somewhat dated, some lines are funny now that weren't necessarily intended to be then. But the jokes and some of the other lines aren't bad. From what I gather, these movies were made to be the warm-up act for other features, so if you're expecting Oscar-worthy material, you'll be disappointed. Taken for what it is, though, a sort of cheesy drag comedy, it's not too bad; it's certainly more watchable than some other films done around the same theme. You need some suspension of disbelief, but even there it's not too bad.

I suspect they played with the script here and there to give screen time to feature particular actors - Kent Rogers' scene where he does a Charlie McCarthy impression particularly seems tacked on for the relatively simple task he performs while doing this (which I won't spoil).

Towards the end you find out where Lady Gaga must have gotten her inspiration, some of the costumes in the girls' show are so preposterous I was laughing at them as well. Which more than likely was intentional. Most are only seen for a short time, I would imagine because much movement in them is not possible.

And I'm not sure I understand what is particularly racist about the scenes featuring black actors. At least from my understanding the jobs they're shown holding wouldn't be unusual for real African-Americans to have during those times; and the scenes involving the washerwoman you could just as easily substitute a ditsy blonde woman (say along the lines of Betty White's character in The Golden Girls) and it would still work. Perhaps people see this and feel it's a slight to all blacks implying they're dumb, but dumbness doesn't know race, and I've known real people who are ditsy enough you might be able to play that scene in real life and get away with it. The only thing that I see that's stereotypical is their dialog and that's just a product of the era.

It's somewhat amusing to see Alan Hale Jr. in a role more along the lines of what Bob Denver would later play in Gilligan's Island, while Noah Beery behaves more like the Skipper would.

Thunder and Lightning (1977)

Fun for what it is

[5/10 · 2 August 2008]

One of the cable channels ran this the other day and I sat and watched it. For a B-movie, it's pretty good, although the plot kind of meanders around before working itself out. The dialog is stereotypical and goofy in places, too. But it's mostly an excuse for a batch of stunts, first with the boats in the swamp, then mostly featuring Harley's black '57 Chevy 4-door hardtop. The stunts sometimes stretch the limits of credibility - jumping from a parking garage to crash through the roof of a car dealer across the street, landing on the showroom floor and driving through the plate glass window, without a flat tire, without a cracked window, without a scratch - while not even wearing seat belts. Also, the same '57 Chevy that outruns a '69 or so Corvette, can't get away from a '59 Ford with a six-cylinder engine (could hear it in a couple places) earlier in the movie. From the looks of things they had some trouble with a few shots, I doubt they intended to smack the side of the Volkswagen Rabbit in the one scene (which must have been just about a brand new car at the time). Another scene cuts away from the car sliding trying to make a tight turn where the car catches the edge of the road and rolls over, I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to think he made the turn like normal (and they used the footage they had to avoid re-shooting and wrecking another car), or if I'm supposed to think he rolled the car and landed on the wheels and kept going.

About the only thing missing was for Kirk and Spock to show up after Hunnicutt (Carmel) - Moonshine on the side of a legit soda bottling business is entirely within character for Harcourt Fenton Mudd. "Three to beam up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here!" In any case, for the guy who likes these types of movies, it's worth watching, it's not exactly art, but it was never intended to be. And it's worth reading through Carmel's IMDb bio page for another ironic twist to this film.