THE BIG BUS (1976)

THE BIG BUS fails to deliver the big laughs...you see how lame that joke was? Well, that's about the caliber of nearly every joke and sight gag in this movie. I don't want to be too rough and say the movie sucked, because it didn't.  It was just weak.

The premise is fine (a gigantic bus has all kinds of problems on it's maiden non-stop cross-country trip), but the jokes are nearly all misses: A guy in a bar fight breaks a paperboard milk carton in half and uses it as a weapon; there's an on-board bowling alley and when the bus goes too fast the bowling ball and the pins slide backwards down the lane; once the bus goes over 90mph, there's no more wind resistance (for whatever reason), so Ned Beatty yells "He's breaking wind at 90!"  Yeah, those are some real knee slappers right there.

Like I said, it's not a bad film and I'm sure the film's makers had their hearts in the right place, but unfortunately they only had about 5 minutes worth of funny jokes for a 88 minute movie. On the positive side: I always enjoy seeing Ruth Gordon.

I'm curious what happened to the bus after filming was over?