Word: trucker
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Kris Kristofferson, a fine actor who has worked well with Peckinpah previously, plays the starring role of Rubber Duck, a laconic, independent trucker who leads a convoy of fellow drivers on an endless protest trek across the American Southwest. He is a typical Peckinpah hero, a macho embodiment of oldtime frontier values. Early on he hitches up with a Peckinpah heroine - a bitchy, citified photographer who is hungry for a Real Man. For some reason, Ali MacGraw has emerged from unofficial retirement to play this demeaning role. Peckinpah shows his gratitude by shooting her synthetic facial expressions in humiliating closeup...
...comedy, Handle With Care rivals a combination of Hollywood '30s movies and slapstick. Perhaps the funniest sequence traces the relationship between two women who discover that they are married to the same man, a trucker who conveniently spends most of his time away from his two homes. After sustaining the initial shock, Dallas Angel (Ann Wedgeworth) and Portland Angel (Marcia Rodd) compare their "mutual" husband's bedside manner over drinks--many, many drinks. Wedgeworth's naive and honest persona and Rodd's cool, assertive character play off each other perfectly; both actresses are accomplished in their timing and facial expression...
...reliable comedienne is Alix Elias, a tubby hooker who adopts the handle "Hot Coffee," since she serves steaming cups of the brew to her clients as a special bonus. Elias's humor stems from her lack of timing; at one point, she interrupts a heated confrontation between the bigamist trucker and his wives to announce her purchase of Vienna Roast beans...
...falters on the tight-wire between moderation and excess, when he over-ambitiously turns on the small-town ideology of the American Dream. Stereotyping works well as a comic device; it becomes banal as a harbinger of a serious message. Summarizing Demme's position, Papa Thermodyne, a senile, retired trucker says: "This country promises everything. What does it give? Nothing." As he supports Papa Thermodyne with his camera, Demme continually focuses on emblems such as the American flag and the crucifix that Dallas Angel sports. It is clear that Demme continually focuses on emblems such as the American flag...
...opportunity to direct if he could get Reynolds to star in the picture. The result was a little number called Smokey and the Bandit, nothing much more elaborate than a 90-minute car chase, with Jackie Gleason playing a sheriff in hot, exasperated pursuit of Reynolds' good-ole-boy trucker. The film cost about $4 million. The last time anyone looked, it had grossed about $100 million, second only to the phenomenal Star Wars for 1977. Reynolds' latest picture, Semi-Tough, has been doing business at the rate of $3 million a week, which is not bad either...