Coast to Coast (1980)

Thanks for the memories!

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

COAST TO COAST is an obscure big studio film few have seen or even heard of. It stars two actors who are short, jittery and have lotsa hair. In other words, it stars two Ewoks. OK, enough with the silliness. COAST TO COAST stars Robert Conrad and Dyan Cannon, who do look like Ewoks. Dyan does her usual nervous Blond ditz who talks a mile a minute, while Robert plays it light (for once) but is rarely convincing playing cute. Usually built like a Pit Bull, Conrad here looks chubby. His ultra tight jeans don't help dispel the weight gain.The story is about a trucker who...stop it there. A trucker? Oh it's one of those road movies made during the CB trend of the 1970s. It's a trend that truly belongs in the 70s and will most likely never resurface again until the end of time. The film itself is harmless enough so there's no point of really trashing it but needless to say, it's not really good. The story is obvious, never convincing and the two stars are not interesting enough to carry an entire film, as lightweight as it is. The film is not on DVD yet. I watched on video. I doubt it'll ever make it on DVD in the near future.

Flighty, but willful and endearing wealthy screwball Madie (a winsomely daffy and bubbly Dyan Cannon) escapes from an asylum she was put in by her cheapskate jerk of a psychiatrist husband. Madie hitches a ride with grumpy, rough-around-the-edges cowboy trucker Charlie Callahan (nicely essayed with scruffy, rugged grace by Robert Blake), a profane, surly, seriously down on his luck grouch who just recently got divorced and is up to his eyeballs in debt. Charlie grudgingly agrees to drive Madie from the Pennsyvania Turnpike to the California coast in his massive 30-ton, 13-gear Diesel behemoth, arguing with her every mile of the way and eventually falling for the sweetly ditsy lass. Spunky little old lady cop Maxine Stuart, her brawny goon partner Dick Durock, and overzealous truck repossessor William Lucking give chase. Directed with typical consummate adroitness by "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" 's Joseph Sargent, with a slight, but efficient script by Stanley Weiser, a jaunty score by the ubiquitous Charles Bernstein, sparkling, polished cinematography by Mario Tosi, a flavorful country and western soundtrack, a pleasingly breezy and playful lighthearted comic tone, plenty of eye-catching scenery, solid cameos by Michael Lerner as an oily, patronizing shrink and "Assault on Precinct 13" 's Darwin Joston as a drunken trucker, and a terrifically dynamic, luminescent chemistry between the two well-matched leads, this fitfully amusing and good-natured tongue-in-cheek road movie romp possesses the right mix of silly charm and goofy laughs to qualify as a perfectly enjoyable piece of fluff.

I never caught the beginning of this movie, but obviously Madie Levrington (Dyan Cannon) escapes from a New York state mental hospital where her husband Benjamin had her committed to avoid the trial of an expensive divorce. Madie hitches a ride back to California with Charles Callahan (Robert Blake), a debt-ridden trucker. He drives a GMC General, yellow maybe. Maybe they met in Kansas City or they stopped in Kansas City to pick up some cattle. They eventually fall in love. But Madie steals the truck, cattle and all, leaving Charles behind, to go to her home in California. Charles hitches a ride and eventually catches up with the truck. He climbs into the open-top cattle trailer. But he can't stop Madie from back there. "I hate cows!" he says. Madie reaches her husband's home. The prospects don't look good for Benjamin.

As an overlooked movie when originally released, this is one of the better films to watch on video. It is also one of the films that gave HBO and the other movie networks great material to televise. Coast to Coast is a fun, timeless tale of two people out of their elements, bonding, and making the most of situations in the lighthearted, Hollywood manner everyone wishes could carryover in real life. This is a fancy feature to view along with Silver Streak and Mother, Jugs, and Speed. While it never reaches the violence displayed in those two pictures, Coast to Coast is a great flick to watch at home, on a date, or whenever you want to look at a film from the 1970s era.