The Big Bus
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Actor: Larry Hagman, Walter BrookeDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-07-16
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Paramount
DVD Reviews of The Big Bus
DVD Review: Underhanded Swipe At The Disaster Film Craze
Summary: 4 Stars
Shortly before the gross-out antics of ANIMAL HOUSE, and, of course, four years before AIRPLANE!, there was a film spoof of a different sort, namely THE BIG BUS. It is similar to the later AIRPLANE! in that it makes as its target the disaster film craze that dominated the box office for much of the 1970s. But the big difference is that the humor in THE BIG BUS is far less dominated by the zany sight gags and dead-pan facial expressions of AIRPLANE! and by a more sardonic brand of comedy, bordering closer to satire than spoof. As such, while it might not be a non-stop yuk-fest like that later film was, THE BIG BUS still has many funny moments. It just goes about it in some underhanded ways.
As has been said, this film involves the debut of a new kind of bus called Cyclops. It runs on nuclear power...and, of course, it's a BIG BUS. But when its two original drivers are killed in a sinister "accident" just prior to its maiden voyage, the daughter (Stockard Channing) of the bus's designer (Harold Gould) calls upon an old flame of hers (Joseph Bologna) to take on the job. Bologna does this in order to redeem himself for a prior bus incident that involved, how shall we say, an unconventional method of survival. Along with a fellow driver named Shoulders O'Brien (John Beck), because of his penchant of steering too close to the shoulder of the road, Cyclops goes on that voyage from New York to Denver, all the while still stalked by the same brother terrorist team (Jose Ferrer; Stuart Margolin) who want to turn it into a pile of atomic waste.
The film goes along at a very steady clip in its own carefree way, with an incredible cast of crazies, most notably (for me, anyway) Murphy Dunne as the deranged cocktail-lounge pianist who serenades a terminally ill man with "Six Months To Live." There are more than a few sight-gags that elicit laughs, in particular the "Flags Of All Nations" bit; "breaking wind" at 90; and the soda-pop caper to fill the back of the bus and keep it from going off a cliff. And when Cyclops is pulled out of its hangar, there is a reverential nod to Stanley Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY via the use of the opening movement of Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" in David Shire's score.
In general, however, THE BIG BUS is more underhanded in its comedic approach than most, in which the complete absurdity of the situation, the total lunacy of the characters involved, and the often broad performances of the actors (including Richard Mulligan, Sally Kellerman, Rene Auberjonois, Ned Beatty, Lynn Redgrave, and others), rather than sight-gags or gross-out insanity, invite the laughs. As such, audiences probably couldn't have appreciated this film as much as they did AIRPLANE! later on. But this hardly makes THE BIG BUS a disappointment, far from it. It just goes about getting its laughs differently.
Description of The Big Bus
For anyone who's wallowed in the inanities of 1970s disaster movies, The Big Bus is not only witty but downright endearing. Instead of an endangered airliner or a capsized cruise ship, this dippily deadpan parody features a block-long, atomic-powered, luxury super-Greyhound setting off on its first transcontinental run with a garish cross section of humankind programmed for redemption, retribution, or just sublime ridiculousness as they roll toward Doom--or Denver, whichever comes first. Writers Fred Freeman and Lawrence J. Cohen, who penned the daffy historical spoof Start the Revolution Without Me (1970), twist the sententious ironies of disaster-movie dialogue into pretzels (priceless scene: Richard B. Shull, as a "terminal traveler" with six months to live, and Bob Dishy, a discredited veterinarian who fitted a rabbit for an IUD, debating who knows more about bitterness). James Frawley's direction is drolly cliché-savvy, but his touch proved too delicate for 1976 audiences; it remained for Airplane! to grab the disaster-spoof brass ring four years later. Still, it's not too late to climb aboard. --Richard T. JamesonBestsellers in DVD
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