The Gumball Rally (1976)

It's kind of hard to describe The Gumball Rally because it's one of those plot less affairs that makes absolutely no sense, but can be enjoyed for some comic moments. Michael Sarrazin heads the cast here and clearly The Gumball Rally was just a preview of things to come before both Cannonball Run movies with bigger name stars were involved.The Gumball Rally is an illegal cross country race in which various people of all kinds of backgrounds get together once a year and race across country, illegally and secretly kind of.Clearly The Gumball Rally had its thunder stolen, plagiarized as it were by The Cannonball Run films. But both of them had so much better casts and a free spirit that this one lacks.

When bored executive Michael Bannon utters the word 'Gumball' various people across the United States drop whatever they are doing and head for New York City. They are all going to take part in the highly unofficial and highly illegal Gumball Rally; a race from New York to Long Beach, California. With the exception of one man on a motorcycle each team is made up of two drivers in a car; mostly high performance sports cars but also a van, a Rolls Royce and a fake police car; the only rule to the race is that there are no rules! Not everybody is there to enjoy the event; Lt. Roscoe, a California policeman, is determined to arrest as many of the drivers as he can... he just has to catch them first. Not all of the competitors will make it to California; in fact some of them won't get out of New York and those that do make it will have to go through various scrapes involving the police, other competitors, a motorcycle gang and even a flock of butterflies! This film isn't chock full of A-list actors, the only ones I recognised were Gary Busey and Raul Julia, however everybody performed well and because of the lack of big names it was hard to guess who would get to the end and who would drop out near the start. The race itself had plenty of hilarious incidents and as the drivers approached the end it actually got fairly tense as the viewer wills their personal favourite to win; my personal favourite was Lapchick the Mad Hungarian motorcyclist... he was hilarious! Filmed long before CGI the stunts are all real and for the most part performed by the actors making it seem far more real than more modern films where the director would no doubt give in to the temptation of adding lots of CGI explosions and crashes! The premise of an unofficial race had been done before and has been done again since but this is one of the best examples of the genre and because it contains no offensive material it can be enjoyed by people of all ages.

Talk about a sub-genre being popular in the 70s, and through into the early 80s. "The Gumball Rally" is a boundlessly, cheerful and comically illicit cross-country road race from New York to Long Beach, Los Angeles. What's waiting for the winner at the finish line… pride… and a tiny gumball machine. The fruitful characters, are thoughtfully picked to participate in the race. The secret word is… Gumball. They are quite stock-like, but in this case it's the mettle and happy-go-lucky awe that makes them all rather bearable, and actually enjoyable to watch. Dialogues are arrantly sharp, and amusing in the character's exchanges. Mainly for me, it was that of the Norman Burton's hell-bent police detective, who's doing anything possible to bring to a halt the race. Burton's straight performance is rather humorous, and truly makes for some pleasurable sequences. The presentable cast; Michael Sarrazin, Tim McIntire, Raul Julia, Susan Fannery, Joanne Nail, Harvey Jason and Gary Busey are all good-willed, living it up in their parts. Since it's a one-trick pony premise, director Chuck Bail delivers on the flavorous, episodic goods (outrageously chaotic vehicle stunts and getting those engines purring) in a nippy fashion that never loses momentum, or in what it wants to be. There are sight gags aplenty. Sure some might be misfires, but the bang-up visual feast makes up for it. The cinematography is smoothly done, and the playful music score pines into the upbeat groove of the film. It wasn't as good, as I first remembered it to be (mainly the slow beginning to set-up the whole situation), but this gimmicky, light-headed farce lazily passes the time.

This is a film about driving fast cars, fast. There's enough plot to keep your interest, but not so much that it gets in the way of the action.The tone of the film isn't exactly tongue in cheek, but there's enough humour to be entertaining without really turning it into a comedy.One of my favourite things about this film is the soundtrack, which lets the music of the engines set the mood. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that one scene features a Ferrari Daytona being driven full-throttle through the deserted streets of New York City, with the wail of the engine reverberating from the skyscrapers.The standard of acting is high; the stars for me (apart from the cars) are Raul Julia and Gary Busey as two of the more flamboyant characters. And let us not forget Lapchik, the Mad Hungarian. Well, you don't get normal people participating in endurance events on 350cc two-stroke motorcycles!