Reviews

Others have covered the plot here. I'll try to give you an idea of why I think you should or should not watch this baby. Like many others here, I first saw this movie on HBO in 1982 as a six or seven year-old. The one-quarter of us in my first-grade class who had HBO at that time all loved this movie. I remember playing Super Fuzz myself and running around the house until I saw the color red - then I'd slow down and fall to the ground or take a dive into our big couch. When we were on first grade recess we used to stand in a circle of three and re-enact the "You try to slap him, but you duck real fast. Now you try to slip him, but you try to slap him and you try to duck..." etc. Meanwhile, Dave Speed (what a true action hero name!) is eating the flowers while the original soundtrack playing in the background resembles the music from the Candyland commercials on TV! Holy friggin' crap, some mad genius wrote this. He's eating the flowers!!!! I loved this movie. And as it was an afternoon staple of the HBO line-up at the time, I must have seen it 15 times. When I was about 13 this movie came on late-night TV after I hadn't seen it for about six years. I remembered this film as a pure gem and stayed up to watch it. But seeing it again at the beginning of my adolescence (and it being around 1988 now) I found it to the worst piece of crap I'd ever wasted my sweet time on. I wished I was back at my grandfather's funeral, it was so painful to sit through. To think that I once enjoyed this film made me almost hate who'd I'd been when I was 7. Now in my late 20s my opinion has softened. I even enjoy this film now. The "super super" early 80's synthesized voices in the background are hokey and fun. The plot is light, enjoyable and not that important. They don't make 'em like this anymore, and you ought to know that going in. A child today seeing this may scoff at the special effects. Effects? I think it was all just camera tricks. I'm not sure how to rate this one from 1 to 10. I'm not even sure if some of the scenes I laugh at were intended to be funny in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way or not. Like the clothing of three "thugs". But if you are a fan of early 80s cheese, and particularly if you were a kid in the early 80s, then check this one out - if you can find it!

I have to correct "mrbsico" for not paying attention to the very things he comments on. It's not that he turned down the opportunity to apply to be an astronaut, it's that Chuck Yeager wasn't allowed to apply. When seraching for astronauts Harry Shearer's character praises Yeager as the ace of aces, but goes on to say that he "doesn't fit the profile" of the type of man Washington is looking for because he never went to college. This was a true pre-requisite which the Mercury Program had. Also, the scene at the end where Yeager crashes his NF-104 doesn't bring him down, it glorifies him. Gordo Cooper even comments that he gets on the cover of magazines, gets a free car, free lunches all across America, a free home with all the furnishings and loads of money and "I ain't even been up there yet". He's famous because he's an astronaut alone - not because of anything he's done. Kaufman cuts back and forth between the scene where Cooper is with Yeager's flight in the desert for reason. Yeager's almost alone with no media around, out in the desert attempting a record which won't put him on Life Magazine's cover. He's trying to set a record because that's what he's made of. He has The Right Stuff; which is something Cooper reazlies as we cut back to the reception and Gordo is asked by the reporters who the best pilot he ever saw was. Yeager may have crashed his plane in his last flight of the movie, but he emerges as a fearless man ever up for the challenge. And that he's not doing any of it for fame or fortune (although in real life the real Yeager cashed in with TV ads and a best-selling autobiography after both the book and the movie were released!!). That's what's rare about this movie for Hollywood to have made. Films are almost never about measuring a man's inner desires, but rather his being able to win the fight at the end. Yeager in contrast doesn't win the flight record at the film's end, but he is still the hero. This is because he dares to do what we never would. And even after his plane crashes he walks out of the gulf of fire and smoke with a severely burned face as if he will be back; you can't keep him down. This is why as the rescuer driving the ambulance as he sees Yeager's figure walking out of the fire in the distance asks, "Is that a man?", Jack Ridley replies, "You're damn right it is!". Ridley isn't merely remarking that it's a man over there, he is commenting that in our world Yeager is one of the few true "men". This film is not about the space program. That is merely a pretext to explore the type of men who have what it takes to volunteer for dangerous missions - even in times of peace. It's about men who have The Right Stuff - and of all those men whom we see in the movie it is Yeager who shines about all others.

I'm torn between giving this movie a ten, or to give it a zero. I first saw this movie in about 1997 on television with a friend of mine. It was so godawful and cheesy that our sides were hurting from laughing. As American who grew up then, it reminded us both of a lame mid-1980's flick. Cheesy soundtrack written for movie, story of dorky looking kid who fights off bad guys and wins the popular girl, has an even dorkier friend for a sidekick, blah blah blah.... We were amazed to see this movue was actually released in 1996! I recommended this film to everyone I knew. Now, I do have to warn you, I did see this movie again later on - on my own. Seeing this movie by yourself might actually kill you, or at least send you into convulsions. Please don't watch this by yourself. Have a friend come over, call someone on your 'phone, have an instant messenger email conversation going on, etc. At least have a pet in the room! It's too much to take by yourself. It was like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. I just wanted it to end and be over with. This movie can only be mocked in the presence of another person who will also find humor on horrid cinema. It's really that bad!

I caught this film recently as a filler to take up time on a cable channel before the 10:00pm film. It's a cute short-film where a young lady in Northern Ireland becomes friends with a priest, who is one of the judges of a local beauty pageant. The lady, Valerie, decides to enter this contest so she can win the prize money and have breast augmentation surgery. She keeps the reasoning for her entry in the pageant between herself and the priest. This put hims in a moral dilemma on whether or not to allow her to win the contest when he votes. The best line is when Valerie is asked at the beauty contest what she'd do with her prize money. She answers, "I'm giving the money to two not very well-known charities (pause as she looks down at her chest) which are very close to my heart." It's a cute film and well worth the (short) time it takes to watch it.

Not only is this film vastly overrated, it's just plain bad. The story-line itself is tired. The manner in which the jokes are made for the viewer is along the lines of "Pulp Fiction". A lot of the humor in Tarantino's film has grown stale over time, but this movie is even worse. "Pulp Fiction" at least has some fresh lines, and the actor's are more believable as criminals. Guy Ritchie's effort seems as if he wants to become the European heir to Tarantino. He plays all too hard to try for the pop-culture youth demographic. This takes away from the film. All throughout it emits the feeling of a director looking for his Muse; but he can't find one so he ends up trying to imitate Scorsese and Tarantino - but convert them "hip" to young Anglo culture. The editing is wretched. When I first saw this film over in the British Isles I could tell it was directed by some young hot-shot who used to make music videos and was trying to hand at feature-length film - but using the same video techniques he employed in his previous works. It's choppy and stupid. If you want to see a film made with real insights of the crime underworld, which also contains genuine moments of laughter see "GoodFellas" or "Mean Streets". This movie is a waste, and in due time people will realize that it's pop-culture feel is paper-thin and no longer wears well.