Technical wizardry at the service of gags, or, rather, technical wizardry as gags, the statement hypothesized by Robert Zemeckis at the onset, a camera craning down from a suspended car's windshield then tracking into another's odometer for the sneaky adjustment, a punchline in close-up. Sixties nostalgia from I Wanna Hold Your Hand shifts to bracing vulgarity circa late-'70s, just as Kurt Russell graduates from Disney to conman greasiness, literally reeling in suckers with $10 bills from the rival used-cars lot across the street. Jack Warden runs both, for his performance is dually split, mustached as the cuddly owner in Russell's lot, sideburned and pompadoured as the cutthroat waiting for his twin bro to kick it from a bum ticker so he can inherit both businesses. Evil Warden hires a demolition-derby daredevil to induce a stroke to Good Warden, who follows the ride by stagging into the office clutching his chest just as a customer finishes his "$50 never killed anybody" mantra. Their boss buried (sitting up in a '59 Edsel), Russell, Gerrit Graham and Frank McRae have to scramble for sales in order to make the deadline for Russell's senate ambitions, politics being a more advanced form of snake-oil salesmanship. Warden arranges for red-white-blue balloons, Russell responds with deals stamped on a stripper's swirling ass; "whiz kids" Michael McKean and David L. Lander are recruited to infiltrate free TV spots in the airwaves in the middle of a football game, and, in a masterstroke, in President Carter's speech, so Graham can show up as Buffalo Bill, shot-gunning autos priced "too fucking high." Ingenue Deborah Harmon shows up as decency-stapler, then is propped on the stand to lie under oath, the checkered flag for the home stretch, speed-as-slapstick with a mile's worth of cars zipped across the prairie by driver's-ed kids. Judge Al Lewis keeps a doll-sized guillotine and gallows, though Dub Taylor in the back of a limo provides Zemeckis with the Capra link for the juice of American corruption, even as Spielberg provides the model for the sleigh-of-hand, before the special-effects took over. Zemeckis scripted with Bob Gale. With Joe Flaherty, Michael Talbott, Harry Northup, and Alfonso Arau.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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