FUNNY CAR SUMMER (1973) ** There's got to be something fun about revving a 500 horsepower engine and letting it go, and having the rear end of your car jump and bounce and aim you some entirely different direction. Another cool piece of the American '70s that's still out there somewhere; inland California, small towns in the West on Sunday afternoons, concrete slabs with farmhouses in the background. I bet they have good cheeseburgers, and really salty fries. Jim Dunn's not the most natural subject for a documentary, which works. By the end of the film even I was thinking in monosyllabic aphorisms like "Well, hell that didn' work." There's a simplicity to it all that's everything good about rural Americana. I mean if those hotshots in Indianapolis want to drive around in circles 500 times, and those silly Europeans want to pass each other cutting back and forth on curves in Ferraris, let 'em. I say if your race day strategy involves passing somebody you've done it all wrong! How'd they get in front of you in the first place? You people can't win a race in less than seven seconds?! So here's what you do: you get the biggest damn engine, run it harder than it can go before you're even started, and blow the other damn car off the road before it can even go the full quarter mile. That's racing, man. Why the film is inflicted with regular injections (where's the nitro, man) of music that sounds like a Dove Soap commercial from the Barbra Streisand station is beyond me, but if you're listenin' to the songs instead of the engines, it's probably the right kind of music for you, anyway.
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