I’m not generally a car movie guy. I don’t really understand cars, which frustrates me because I’m certain I’m getting screwed every time I go to a mechanic. So, the car in this flick wasn’t the draw it was Mark Hamill. This was his first movie after Star Wars the previous year and, frankly, I’ve never seen him in anything from that time other than those flicks. Sure, I’ve caught him in cameos more recently, but this is probably the only movie I’ve seen that he didn’t get based on playing Luke Skywalker.

The plot of the flick revolves around high school senior Hamill, a real gear head who salvages a Corvette body and brings it to his auto shop class where they spend the rest of the school year rebuilding the car into the bad ass vehicle you see on the poster (which doesn’t show off the lightning bolt paint job). Then, on the first day of test drives, the car gets ripped off. Distraught, Hamill puts posters up all over his town and gets word the car’s in Vegas, so he hitches to Vegas with Annie Potts who’s on her way to town to become a prostitute. Hamill then spends the rest of the summer trying to find the car and eventually does after plenty of near misses, but then there’s a big twist that facilitates the last 20 minutes or so of the movie.

What really impressed me about this movie is that it wasn’t just a goofy comedy about a car. There were some real, human elements involved. Potts and Hamill’s relationship is incredibly complicated, but still reads as true. I also really liked that Hamill spent his first few nights sleeping inside of unlocked UHaul trailers. Something about that rang as really clever to me. And then there’s the ending, which I am about to SPOIL. See, it turns out that the car was stolen by the auto shop teacher’s former student who steals cars and resells them. The teacher, who Hamill considered a real friend, does this to make some extra money after taxes and bills got increased on him. Hamill then starts working for the chop shop guys designing cars, but something snaps in him, he kicks some ass, grabs Potts from a really strange porno scene involving the flippers you see in the poster and then drives the car back to his friends.

Hamill does a great job that makes me want to see him in more movies from this time and Potts even avoids being as super annoying as she would become in later years. Fun stuff, you should definitely check it out on Netflix Instant Watch!