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It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad Movie

Reader Review


The Runaway Car

Posted by: James Stocks
Date Submitted: Sunday, January 21, 2001 at 08:28:10
Date Posted: Thursday, January 17, 2002 at 07:59:49

The basic pretense of this made-for-TV movie is that a woman is driving on the freeway, and suddenly her brakes fail, so the car won't slow down and stop.

This is where the proverbial wheels come off. Why doesn't she turn the engine off?! Why!? She gets help from the highway patrol, and there's a radio station phone poll for useful ideas about how they can stop the car. Not one person thinks of taking the car out of gear or turning the ignition off.

Among the clever ideas they come up with:

- Drive directly in front of the vehicle and break.

- Climb on the vehicle as it is moving and pull off the fan belt by hand.

One scene involves the car approaching a raised drawbridge. Ohhhh, the tension! Will they lower the bridge in time? Do you care? Don't draw bridges normally stay in the lowered position? They lower the bridge in the nick of time, and the movie returns to the problem in hand: how do they stop the car without crashing it?

Well, they crash it.

High points include the sudden and unimaginative ending, an airlifted baby (how many G's can a newborn handle?), and when the police suddenly stop helping out because the car leaves their jurisdiction.

Response From RinkWorks:

Um. Two hours of a car careening out of control?

Here's a thought. If, for whatever reason, you can't take the car out of gear, turn it off, or run it into a lake or something, why not just get the woman a police escort, get her on the freeway, and let her just go all out until the thing runs out of gas?


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