Grand Theft Auto (PG)

Stand down gamers: this film isn’t the long-awaited cinematic chronicle of Liberty City’s criminal underclass. It’s actually a Roger Corman quickie (a sequel to 1976’s Eat My Dust) that’s well deserving of the phrase ‘car-crash cinema’. Between playing fresh-faced Richie Cunningham in Happy Days and becoming the director of such blockbusters as The Da Vinci Code, Ron Howard wrote, shot and starred in this no-frills road-movie comedy about a pair of young lovers (Howard and Nancy Morgan) eloping to Vegas in a stolen Rolls Royce. It’s basically a giant demolition derby smash-’em-up with VW Beetles, jeeps, buses and helicopters joining the hot pursuit after a $25,000 bounty lands on the couple’s heads. Think Cannonball Run meets Romeo + Juliet geared towards truck-driving rednecks. Give us Burt Reynolds and Sally Fields in the driving seat any day…

DVD Extras:

The only extra on the disc is a dated and uninspired interview with a soft-spoken Corman.

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