Used Cars
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Year Released: 1980
Rating: 1.0
Brothers Roy and Luke Fuchs (Jack Warden in a dual role) run rival car dealerships right across from each other, but when Roy arranges for a stunt driver to give Luke a fatal heart attack in order to take over his establishment, the collective team of fast-talking Rudy (Kurt Russell), Jeff (Gerrit Graham), Jim (Frank McRae) and Luke's only daughter Barbara (Deborah Harmon) do what they can to save the place. In what's become typical of Zemeckis' movies, it uses the "more-is-more" "aesthetic" of throwing everything at the screen and hoping something sticks (which very little actually does): they "jam" TV broadcasts to air live advertisements for the shop, there's a feeble romantic subplot, strippers are hired for "promotional purposes," Barbara is taken to court (for trivial nonsense ... how fitting) and then there's a convoy of several hundred cars rounded up to help her win her case. While I think it's too overstuffed and buffoonish, it has found a cult audience like Spielberg's 1941 ... which was also written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale.