BootDigest
Such a frustrating disappointment
Nonureva
Really Surprised!
SanEat
A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
Predrag
A simple and funny plot where various people with multiple traffic violations are sentenced to traffic school and have their vehicles impounded until they pass traffic school. They then band together when they uncover a scam by the police officer (James Keach) giving the traffic school course, to sell the impounded vehicles. They have to stop and expose his plot to the authorities. The cast is perfect and captures the great witty but goofy comedy we all love. Fred Willard is as funny as ever in this film - a must see! John Murray's character is a rehash of all characters of the more famous and older sibling Bill, from his previous work in Stripes and Ghostbusters at that time. Absolute best part of this film is the casting of Nedra Volz as Mrs. Hoch. You'll remember Nedra as Adelaide on Different Strokes, and countless 70's and 80's TV shows. You just have to say to people "the little old lady with the bun" and they knew who she was right away. The story of "Moving Violations" is a fun one. They set up a pretty believable situation - drivers sentenced to traffic school. It starts off much better than it finishes. The last couple of sequences (including the lame collision course bit) don't really make an impact or leave things much better. But things end on a happy note as they all get their cars back and moments later, are arrested yet again for moving violations.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.
BlackJack_B
Many moons ago I reviewed Bachelor Party and said I hated it, calling it a waste of Tom Hanks' talent. After their success with Police Academy, the Israel/Proft team decided to attempt another one-off comedy called Moving Violations. While it has become a forgotten film, it doesn't deserve that fate. It's an above-average film with a likable cast and a fun premise. Its biggest weakness is having its main characters rip off other actors extensively.John Murray (brother of Bill) plays Dana Cannon, a man who runs a nursery for plants. He and a number of other people have been ticketed for various driving violations from corrupt Birch County Deputy Hank Halik (James Keach) and forced to go to Traffic School. They later find out that Halik and equally corrupt Judge Nedra Henderson (Sally Kellerman) are running an illegal car selling scheme where they sell the cars of the people who have had their cars impounded for traffic violations. Of course, the headstrong Mr. Cannon isn't going to take this lying down.Moving Violations, like a lot of 1980's comedies, has an intriguing cast of actors. A mix of one-hit wonders, siblings of major movie actors, T.V. stars and the debut of Don Cheadle make up the cast. John Murray portrays a character similar to his brother mixed with Michael J. Fox and does an excellent job, though it probably hurt his career as an actor because he couldn't come up with an original personality. James Keach's performance reminded me of his brother Stacy's performance as Sgt. Stedenko in Up In Smoke...maybe a little too similar. Jennifer Tilly delivers that sultry voice of hers in one of her early appearances. However, the one who steals the movie from everyone else is Nedra Volz. She plays the blind-as-a-bat Mrs. Loretta Houk who confidently goes about in the world as if she's got 20/20 vision with hilarious results. Seeing her and Clara "Where's the beef?" Peller together in the movie made me mark out. Seeing these senior icons of the 1980's in the same scene? Awesome.It's an 80's film so get ready for all the trappings of the decade but it's not too bad here. Some good sight gags, funny situations, good writing and an inventive place for lovemaking add up to a pretty good film. Certainly worth a look.
PeterMitchell-506-564364
Another Police Academy clone type film, again this one a bag of laughs. A group of different aged dudes, misfits, who've created traffic chaos on our roads, are subjected to traffic school, led by troublemaker Murray, priceless. Some of these dudes, in real life, if creating these offenses, wouldn't end up doing this refresher course, much to the dislike of their hard ass mentor, a great James Keach, Stacey's brother, where him and Murray, go head to head, or one would say in one circumstance, cheek to cheek. Most of the cheek to this one, comes from Murray, a comedy revelation here. All of the actors, bring quite good performances to comedy of this calibre. Murray's minor crime, was while driving his ute, carrying fertilizer, an apple he was chewing on, fell out of his hand, while going over a bump. The cycle cop who pulls him over, suspects the fertilizer of being a white drug substance. When he tastes a dab of it, he wish to hell he didn't, where this circumstance earns Keach a one liner of the word S..t. MV is another film of laughs where Murray and his peers go all out to expose Keach, the worst of enemies and his girl cop, plus a female judge, Kellerman, he's also doing. The kissing scene in the gravity chamber with Murray and Tilly, (who disappeared off our screens after this flick, then came back in the late nineties, in a major f...in' way) is so cool, even their removed clothes get in on the act. The last scene of the film is a rib tickler, if ever I saw one, proving that some people don't belong on the road, but this movie deserves it's time of viewing.
Jack Gallagher
At the time this film was made (the 1980s), it was sometimes the case that a person might enjoy watching horror films. This cultural moment is crystallized in artistic permanence here by the character of Wink Barnes, played by Ned Eisenberg. In his many scenes, Mr. Barnes brings up the topic of horror films despite their inapplicability to the diaphanous and delicate plot of Moving Violations. On meeting a woman, he asks her about her own tastes in horror cinema. Being told that a classmate is anxious about his father's reaction to a dismaying contretemps, Wink advises watching a horror film. When Dana Cannon tells a largely pointless anecdote about violence in the Arab world, Wink arrives and announces that he, given his tastes for violence, would like to see such a thing. Asked to meet his friends socially, he arrives dressed as Jason Voorhees. Some sophisticated viewers might feel that they had come to sufficiently understand Wink's character at this point and would not need to see his schtick reiterated without elaboration any more. Such viewers are in for a surprise as Barnes appears again and again, sounding his one note each time.Other fashions and political movements of the 1980s are similarly examined by the film (punk music, space exploration, perms), but none with the relentless jackhammer regularity of the mystifyingly dull jokes about Wink Barnes's taste in film.
