{"id":8467,"date":"2024-11-18T23:17:07","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T04:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8467"},"modified":"2024-11-18T23:17:07","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T04:17:07","slug":"the-big-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/18\/the-big-bus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Bus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Big Bus<\/strong> (1976)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, comic violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: James Frawley\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lawrence J. Cohen and Fred Freeman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Shire\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematographer: Harry Stradling Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 23, 1976 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Joseph Bologna, Stockard Channing, Rene Auberjonois, John Beck, Ned Beatty, Bob Dishy, Jose Ferrer, Ruth Gordon, Harold Gould, Larry Hagman, Sally Kellerman, Richard Mulligan, Lynn Redgrave, Richard B. Shull, Stuart Margolin, Howard Hesseman, Mary Wilcox, Walter Brooke, Vic Tayback, Murphy Dunne, Raymond Guth, Miriam Byrd-Nethery, Dennis Kort, James Jeter, Vito Scotti, Harry Holcombe, Morgan Upton, Beans Morocco, Della Thomas, Jess Nadelman, Michael W. Schwartz.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $3.5M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Before there was Airplane, there was The Big Bus<\/strong>, a funny spoof of disaster movies centering on the world\u2019s first nuclear-powered bus, the Cyclops. It was only a matter of time. As the prologue states, there have already been movies about \u201cbig earthquakes\u201d, \u201cbig boats sinking\u201d, \u201cbig buildings burning\u201d and \u201cbig German balloons busting\u201d. Why not big buses exploding? It\u2019s either that or a big fake meteor hurtling towards Earth. Wait a minute….<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Cyclops, so named for its single front headlight, is days away from making its maiden voyage, a non-stop run from New York to Denver, when a bomb goes off in the lab injuring both the driver and co-driver. In need of a quick replacement, bus designer Kitty Baxter (Channing, Grease) reluctantly agrees to recruit her ex-lover Dan Torrance (Bologna, My Favorite Year), a disgraced driver accused of surviving a big crash by eating all of his passengers. He denies it, claiming he only unknowingly ate a foot. He gets on board as does Shoulders (Beck, Rollerball), a young driver with a reputation for driving on road shoulders and blacking out in times of stress.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Not everybody wants to see Cyclops succeed. Ironman (Ferrer, Dune), an evil tycoon encased in a huge iron lung, is out to sabotage it on behalf of Arab oil sheiks. When his first attempt to put a halt to things fails, he has his dim brother Alex (Margolin, Kelly\u2019s Heroes) plant a time bomb on the bus itself. Naturally, it\u2019ll be Dan who has to try to defuse the bomb to save everybody\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Like the genre it lovingly parodies, The Big Bus<\/strong> has a passenger manifest comprised of a cast of all-stars playing character types we\u2019ve met before- a priest questioning his faith (Auberjonois, Benson), a little old lady (Gordon, Harold and Maude), a guy with only six months to live (Shull, Splash), a veterinarian who lost his license (Dishy, Critical Condition), a fashion designer with a personal score to settle (Redgrave, Georgy Girl) and an about-to-be divorced couple, Claude (Mulligan, Soap) and Sybil (Kellerman, MASH), still attracted to each other. Back at mission control, bickering engineers Shorty (Beatty, Network) and Johnny (Hesseman, WKRP in Cincinnati) attempt to keep the bus on the road after project leader Baxter (Gould, Rhoda) is critically injured in the blast. Throw in an obnoxious lounge singer (Dunne, The Blues Brothers) and an arrogant doctor (Hagman, Dallas). You\u2019re ready to roll!<\/p>\n

\u00a0With all the big stars in The Big Bus<\/strong>, you\u2019d think nothing could top any one of them. Well, you\u2019d be wrong in thinking this. Cyclops is the BIGGEST star of The Big Bus<\/strong>. It\u2019s like a cruise ship on wheels. It\u2019s a huge double-decker, articulated bus that can hold up to 110 passengers. It has a cocktail lounge, swimming pool, bowling alley (one lane only) and captain\u2019s dining room. Since it\u2019s powered by nuclear energy, it never has to stop for gas. It\u2019s self-washing and self-tire changing, functions it performs while in motion no less. It never has to stop for any reason (except maybe sabotage). Basically, it\u2019s the future of bus travel.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As a comedy, The Big Bus<\/strong> largely succeeds. While never approaching the total zaniness of Airplane, it has a genuinely silly spirit that shows in its upending of the genre\u2019s clich\u00e9s. The pilot…. er, driver Dan has a troubled past that affects his performance. His father, also a bus driver, died while trying to navigate a notoriously dangerous mountain road. He\u2019s never gotten over it. From that, you can safely deduce that Dan will find himself on that very same road by movie\u2019s end. Director James Frawley (The Muppet Movie) hits all the marks of the genre, some more successfully than others. He also infuses the movie with jokes and sight gags that range from silly to dumb. One of my favorite bits is a bar fight in which somebody wields a broken milk carton like a dangerous weapon- \u201cLook out! He\u2019s got a broken milk carton!\u201d Another funny bit has a pick-up truck with a family of hillbillies embedded in the side of the bus after crashing into it. Don\u2019t even get me started on the soda pop flood.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The cast, a game bunch of talents, looks like they\u2019re having a good time goofing on disaster movie character types. Somehow they manage to play their roles straight-faced with their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks. It\u2019s a great ensemble cast. Everybody has a moment or two. There aren\u2019t any bad performances in The Big Bus<\/strong>. The actors deliver exactly what the material calls for and have fun doing it. It must be infectious because I had fun watching it. It\u2019s a good-natured mindless comedy; it aims for the funny bone and makes a direct hit.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Big Bus (1976)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, comic violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: James Frawley\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lawrence J. Cohen and Fred Freeman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Shire\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematographer: Harry Stradling Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 23, 1976 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Joseph Bologna, Stockard Channing, Rene Auberjonois, John Beck, Ned Beatty, Bob Dishy, Jose Ferrer, Ruth Gordon, Harold Gould, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8688,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/The-Big-Bus-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8467"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8690,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8467\/revisions\/8690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}