Rating: 9/20
Plot: The hi-jinks of a bunch of cabbies in Washington D.C. One of the Baldwin brothers comes along with aspirations of starting his own company. There's kidnapping, a lost violin, and a competing cab company that all threaten to interrupt the proceedings.
Mr. T., that guy with the mohawk who towers over the Capitol Building up there, is featured prominently on all the posters for this, but Adam Baldwin gets top billing. T., as I call him, is just part of an ensemble cast, a collection of C-list comedians. Most of them retreated into the shadows following this movie. It's Bill Maher's first movie, but he's already got that smugness down. Gary Busey brings his absurdly broad shoulders and even broader teeth, stomping around like a tornado arriving fashionably late to a wrecking ball's birthday bash. Busey is pretty much playing a raunchier version of himself post-motorcycle-accident, or at least the closest to his current self than I've seen in other pre-motorcycle-accident appearances. If this is worth watching at all--and it isn't--then it's for his Elvis impression. T., as we all know, is quite the master thespian, growling lines like "My cab ain't no motel!" and flexing his temples. I"ve always been curious about Mr. T.'s pants. It always looks like he's wearing faded yoga pants or something, the kind of pants that seem to be threatening to show off more of Mr. T. than anybody needs to see but ending up showing off just the right amount of Mr. T. The best character is a sort of homeless philosopher named Mr. Rhythm. He's played by Whitman Mayo who Humphrey Bogart's third wife should have married after Bogart started sleeping with Bacall so she could have been Mayo Mayo.
I'm going to start a new paragraph just so we can pause and appreciate the fact that I've got two blog in a row with somebody named Mayo. That's not quite as impressive as my "man" streak, but it's pretty good!
Whitman would have been somewhere around 15 in the mid-40's, but there was a pretty noticeable age difference with Bogart and Bacall, too. Anyway, Mr. Rhythm passes off some good advice in the movie: "Don't let your dick run your life. That's Mr. Rhythm's good advice. Save your life." Even more motivating was this pearl of wisdom: "If you can go through the night without committing suicide, then you ok." The "Around the Clock, We're Gonna Rock" song--clever lyrics there--dates this thing, and if that doesn't, the chauvinism and racism will. I felt forced into watching this thing because it was expiring on Netflix, but it wasn't worth my time at all. Well, I take that back. I did find out where my childhood nickname--White Bread Chicken Shit Hockenberry--came from. But I didn't laugh a single time which is usually bad for a comedy.
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