VIVA KNIEVEL! (1977) *1/2 When the definitive book is written on how the Republican party successfully made inroads with "trailer park culture," the cover should be of Evel Knievel in his star-spangled clown cape. Evel, as himself for he could be no other, is a conception of a pint-sized John Wayne, by one who admires the Duke primarily for his girth. He is intensely loyal to his alcoholic buddy (the secret formula for making a "Montana Mary," containing beer, tomato juice and Wild Turkey, is not revealed), denounces drugs at every turn (but, to be fair, doesn't address tax evasion), mocks women who choose to be addressed as "Ms.," wears big rock jewelry, takes the law into his own hands, shakes down then forgives unethical promoters, and jumps motorcycles over expanses of fire for a living. He appears swollen, like a sunburned and balding toad. Incredibly, at the time, despite the fact that his media-crazed "jump over" the Snake River Canyon was an ignominious failure that was aborted via parachute several inches away from the launch pad, he was one of the most admired men in America. Nearly every teenaged boy in my school wanted to be him (I wanted to be Tug McGraw, the nerd wanted to be Anton van Leeuwenhoek), though the girls were much brighter and all wanted a romance with Cat Stevens. The movie is monumental in its asinine saturation, lack of originality, putrid acting, the mundane and ubiquitous efforts at striking into the depths of schmaltz, depraved depiction of parenthood unrealized, portrayal of the idiocy of all involved (some intended), etc. Only the latent metaphor of the jump as an affirmation of the inevitable triumph of the tenacious and resilient, or trasendence, or faith, or the manqué teleology of wheels bridled by traction, is unaddressed. Leslie Nielsen would have been much better cast as the hero, he's entirely wasted as the humourless evil businessman. Evel triumphs over evil, get it? I'm sure that it's no longer on her resume', but I am forced to report that Lauren Hutton also appears in this. Mock her not, for she is plucky to have survived. For all that, I have to admit to having found it all reasonably entertaining, in a perverse sort of way. It's like "The Dukes of Hazzard," but without the sophistication. Still, you gotta admit it takes a lot of balls to jump a bike over 50 cars. And he was on one of the all-time coolest pinball machines.
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