Wonderful character development!

the audience applauded

Am I Missing Something?

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Kenny Dantley Jr. (Mark Hamill) is on a school trip to the junkyard when he rescues a trashed Corvette. He brings it back to his L.A. school. The students fix it up and trick it out with the help of shop teacher Ed McGrath (Eugene Roche). The class takes it out for a ride when it gets stolen. Everybody including the cops write it off and then a traveling salesman tells him about seeing it in Las Vegas. He hitches a ride from Vanessa (Annie Potts) who is going to Vegas to go pro as a hooker.This is a fun little film with plenty of 70s kitsch, car-obsession, and an early Annie Potts. She's the fun that keeps the movie interesting and more than a flat B-movie. It's Hamill's first film after his unexpected stardom from Star Wars and probably filmed before that. He's a cute leading man but he's a bit overshadowed by the outrageous Potts. She's cute, funny, and a compelling character. At least, I care about her much more than the car.

The summer of 1979, when this flick was a staple on that new movie medium called HBO, was Gas Line Summer & Iranian Hostage Crisis Summer. A change of mood was about to end low-budget, loner-on-a-mission car films, although "Smokey & the Bandit" kept need-for-speed flicks going as live-action Roadrunner cartoons for a few more years. "Corvette Summer" is as quirky as any earlier movie like "Vanishing Point" or "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry," if lighter & sexier than most. Just-graduated, high-school automotive genius Kenneth (Hamill) hitchhikes to Vegas in pursuit of the car theft ring that ripped off his Shop Class masterpiece, a super-custom, right-hand-drive Vette. In the spiritual limbo of the I-15 desert (see "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas") he gets into a custom van (yes, this was the tail end of the van craze, too) tricked out as a mobile bordello & driven by sassy, aspiring hooker Vanessa (Potts), on her way to Sin City to make her, well, whatever it is ambitious hookers make. VANessa, get it? Shy, innocent Kenneth is in way over his head in Vegas, with only his all-American resolve & his new friend to help him, although the hard-edged young call girl is predictably less world-wise than she first seems. Why, in the "I am Woman" age, Vanessa invested her talents, money & future in the world's oldest but least dignified profession over, say, college or even hairdressing, can be explained by young men who'd like to think that all women at least consider the joys of that career path. Remember the target audience, right? Hamill is a good choice for the whitebread Kenneth (the car doesn't even belong to him personally, but to his school), who won't be deterred from his goal by violence, money or even love--until he finds out why the car was really stolen. Potts acts with style & energy but Vanessa is too incredible for any but the most credulous testosterone machine to buy into. The bad guys are made surprisingly human, especially by the always-fine Brion James. But there's not much action & this isn't the kind of movie that can be carried by dialog, plot twists or Heavy Themes. You could always reach up, turn the TV dial & plug in your "Pong" console. The similar but meaner Chris Mitchum vehicle "Stingray," which appeared at about the same time, featured lamer acting but more skin, speed & mayhem. The best features of each film might have produced a Vette movie worth remembering. Thus the Trans Am was left to rule the box-office muscle car showroom. Another forgotten car movie brought back from the dead by "Speed Channel's" fine weekend series, Lost Drive-in.

Corvette Summer is a delightful piece if you see it with kid's eyes. There's a pretty innocence in the whole story. This movie was made partly to exploit Hamill's success at that time. But if you know nothing about Mark you may simply enjoy it, after all it has fabulous muscle cars and a sympathetic premise and over all things it doesn't try to be more than it is. This is like a children's tale in the late 70's, don't misunderstand this as something derogative. The plot has many similarities with Jack the giant killer (lucky those guys that find valuable things in the streets!!) and it is good that old children's tale are reinvented from time to time. Mature people can have problems with this and think it absurd, but sometimes it is better believe we can find what can change our lives in a dumpster or walking on the street than believe we will be unhappy adults for the rest of our lives.It's positive the simplistic story that presents Summer of Corvette, there's no abundance of subplots, it's a linear plot. Also it's nice find a movie about a guy who's got no money and suddenly can have all what he wanted. If you don't like this, there are lots of Hollywood products with people with fancy cars, and some of them justify car robbery probably a realistic way for people of the lower classes to get classy cars. Sometimes it's good been a bit unrealistic.

Less than a dozen comments, none in the past couple of months: meets my criteria for throwing in my two cents... I found this to be an okay movie: not dreadful; but not great, either. I'm not a car fanatic, so, I suppose that THAT decreases one's rating right there. Mark Hamill's physique also failed to convince me that, as the film asks us to believe, he is a just-graduated high schooler. I did the math and concluded that, at the time, he was at least 26! Otherwise, it's fairly interest-holding and inoffensive. The premise is that the auto-body-class's project was the restoration of a Sting Ray, which gets stolen. Hamill's passion is to recover it. Eventually he tracks down the thieves, and, along the way, he develops a relationship with a gal who attempts a number of careers, including the world's oldest profession. Also central to the storyline is Hamill's teacher, who he looks up to. All in all, it's an okay expenditure of time and/or (a reasonable amount of) money.