Portia Hilton
Blistering performances.
Brennan Camacho
Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.
Matylda Swan
It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.
Yazmin
Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.
O2D
A seemingly unrelated group of people are going to race from New York City To Los Angeles.The winner gets a gum ball machine. That premise is the funniest thing about this movie. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this movie but had no idea it was a comedy till I saw the poster 1 minute ago. With an already thin plot, this movie drops the ball on one of the characters. A mechanic who doesn't have a car(yeah right) wants to join the race.He sees an ad in the paper for a person to drive a Rolls Royce to LA and you see where this is going. He leaves the garage while it's dark out and doesn't get to the guys house till it's daylight.Lots of other things that don't make sense happen, then they get there and the mechanic doesn't go to the finish line,he delivers the car! Huh? The only reason he drove the car was to win the race and then he just gives up? Not original and not funny but worth seeing once.
bkoganbing
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.
Woodyanders
This immensely lively and entertaining 70's tongue-in-cheek cross country road race romp stars Michael Sarrazin as the rich businessman who sponsors an illegal event from New York to Long Beach, California which attracts a colorfully flaky assortment of hardcore nutty car race enthusiasts. Among the race's kooky participants are the always great Tim McIntire as Sarrazin's bitter, yet amiable rival, an especially hilarious Raul Julia as a hysterically lecherous womanizing Italian driver (the lovely Colleen Camp pops up as a sweet young honey Julia happily jumps in the sack with), Nicholas Pryer as Sarrazin's anxious college professor co-pilot, Susan Fannery and Joanne Nail as a pair of sassy'n'sexy good-time gals, Gary Busey in his usual wild redneck yahoo role, Harvey Jason as a maniacal motorcyclist, and Vaughn Taylor and J. Pat O'Malloy as a couple of lovably laid-back doddering old guys. Norman Burton gives an uproariously broad performance as the ramrod killjoy police detective determined to stop the race. Director Chuck Bail keeps the pace zipping along at a speedy rate, staging the copious vehicular carnage with a genuinely rousing rip-snorting panache, stoking the sidesplitting silly humor to a cartoonishly high-pitched degree and eliciting engagingly spirited performances from a uniformly solid cast. The opening third is a tad drawn-out, but once the race itself gets underway the film kicks into third gear, pops the clutch, and puts the pedal to the metal by really delivering the expected tire-screeching, rubber-burning, automobile-wrecking goods with infectiously carefree and giddy go-for-it abandon. Both Richard Glouner's vibrant cinematography and Dominic Frontiere's delightfully sprightly score greatly enhance the overall irresistibly goofy and good-natured merriment. To sum up, "The Gumball Rally" makes for a sound source of exuberantly wacky and light-hearted fun.
Jim_Gillespie
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!