Hal Needham's second feature as director is fun, engaging, with a very strong cast. It's better than Smokey because it touches on more serious themes: Burt Reynolds' stuntman is getting older, there's a young tyke coming up (Jan Michael Vincent), his girlfriend is long suffering (Sally Field, lovely in a thankless part), his bestie (James Best) is getting on, Fields' dad (Brian Keith), a stuntman (called "Jocko" the nickname of Fields' stepdad, Jock Mahoney, a real stuntman) has a stroke.
I love how Reynolds was so confident to be around all these scene stealing actors (even low energy Vincent was pretty). He was like John Wayne in that regard.
The director, Robert Klein, was meant to be a spoof of Peter Bogdanovich but you can only really tell at the end when he goes on about pieces of time. no wonder Bogdanovich got annoyed with him. They might've had more fun though doing a more direct take off.
A lovely sense of family, which the best of Hal Needham films had.
No comments:
Post a Comment