I can't believe how much this movie charmed me. Probably part of it is that it's genuinely funny, where most the comedies I've watched from 1977 have been painfully unfunny. I was surprised to learn so much of it was ad-libbed, because the humor is far more timeless than most film comedy from this year.
The Trans Am has the second strongest engine in the film, after Burt Reynolds's charm, which is on full blast. The car stunts are quite good, the chemistry between Reynolds and Field is sparkly and rarely in questionable taste, and the thin plot hardly matters, as the plot is very far from the point. In fact, this movie is kind of a mess in a traditional sense, in terms of character development and so forth, but none of that matters; like with Fury Road, the momentum of the thing causes structural issues to fall away in importance.
Jackie Gleason seems behind the times here, especially in his ad-libbing, which belongs to a prior decade of comedy. If he didn't have so much history as an entertainer, he'd slide meaninglessly into this role, which doesn't need to be more than one-dimensional, but because he is who he is, he made me sad.
Trucker movies have vanished almost without a trace in the years since 1977, and this movie can be enjoyed today without knowing anything else about this genre. But it's pretty much a trucker movie in a Trans Am. It was a big moneymaker, #2 after Star Wars, and that kind of popularity makes it worth more than a casual glance.
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