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Better Together
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Product Description
Amazon.com Essential Video
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
Review
Director/writer Robert Zemeckis works with much of the same team that contributed to Steven Spielberg's bloated bomb 1941 and Zemeckis' own charming and wacky directorial debut I Wanna Hold Your Hand to produceUsed Cars, a low-brow comedy boasting easy targets (used car salesmen) and irresistibly attractive cruelty. The film's incessant assault on its characters and their perverse quest for the American Holy Grail (money and power) has the pacing and energy of a 1930's zany screwball comedy, but is much darker in spirit. Kurt Russell, in a stunning break from his youthful Disney roles, epitomizes the archetypal unscrupulous salesman who will stop at nothing to rip off his customers and crush the competition. The entire cast, many of whom were plucked from such 1960's and '70's schlock as The Munsters, Laverne and Shirley, and The Gong Show, appear to be enjoying themselves immensely as they cavort through this ridiculously obnoxious material. The anger at the heart of the humor, as well as the broadness (some say tastelessness) of the comedy combined to limit the film's audience. Zemeckis, however, was able to springboard from Used Cars to the kinder, gentler Indiana Jones homage Romancing the Stone, the wildly successful Back to the Future trilogy, and, eventually, to the Oscar-winning Forrest Gump. ~ Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide
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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
Review
Director/writer Robert Zemeckis works with much of the same team that contributed to Steven Spielberg's bloated bomb 1941 and Zemeckis' own charming and wacky directorial debut I Wanna Hold Your Hand to produceUsed Cars, a low-brow comedy boasting easy targets (used car salesmen) and irresistibly attractive cruelty. The film's incessant assault on its characters and their perverse quest for the American Holy Grail (money and power) has the pacing and energy of a 1930's zany screwball comedy, but is much darker in spirit. Kurt Russell, in a stunning break from his youthful Disney roles, epitomizes the archetypal unscrupulous salesman who will stop at nothing to rip off his customers and crush the competition. The entire cast, many of whom were plucked from such 1960's and '70's schlock as The Munsters, Laverne and Shirley, and The Gong Show, appear to be enjoying themselves immensely as they cavort through this ridiculously obnoxious material. The anger at the heart of the humor, as well as the broadness (some say tastelessness) of the comedy combined to limit the film's audience. Zemeckis, however, was able to springboard from Used Cars to the kinder, gentler Indiana Jones homage Romancing the Stone, the wildly successful Back to the Future trilogy, and, eventually, to the Oscar-winning Forrest Gump. ~ Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide
See all Product Description
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