It's a shame that The Big Bus didn't do better initially, because it's a lot more entertaining than the inane movies it parodies. The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, and The Towering Inferno are remembered as pleasant pasttimes, mostly by people who saw them at an impressionable age (which of course, is fine). All I remember are the awful actors elbowing each other for attention and the ruthlessly insulting criteria used to kill off cast members. Getting sentimental? You're surely being set up for tragedy. Not only do the cardboard villains get their just desserts for the enjoyment of the crowd, but any hint of adultery will result in a horrible death. Perhaps the stark reality of the 9.11 deaths will finally make people realize what reprehensible taste most of The Towering Inferno embodies, especially the spectacle of people falling hundreds of stories like burning hearth-logs, as 'retribution' for their sins.

The Big Bus is fun from one end to the other. It has some of Airplane!'s oddball sight gags, such as the press tram taking the reporters waiting to see Cyclops in a circle around the parking lot, just to fill out time for more credits in the title sequence. The acting is all right-on, with everyone taking their roles in earnest. Director James Frawley (The Muppet Movie) finds a tone of straight Hollywood hokum and sticks with it; there's no mugging at the camera, no matter how absurd things get.

The design of the Big Bus is nonsense, a tacky, showoff monstrosity that's a cross between a Greyhound interstate cruiser and the Jupiter from 2001. The giant blast nozzles on the 'atomic engine' at the rear are pretty funny, as are features like the automatic tire-replacing device, or even better, the giant rollers that wash the bus even without its having to stop, leaving a wake of soap bubbles behind on the highway.

The 'bus of fools' hodgepodge of corny passengers, each with their cliché'd theme, works beautifully. There's always some self-absorbed whiner at the bar - The Big Bus gives us two of them, who have to compete for the honor of being the most miserable. The 'priest with a crisis of conscience', is lifted fairly intact from Richard Basehart's character in the 1951 Titanic. Here, Rene Auberjonois delights in being abusive and rude to stock busybody Ruth Gordon, as if compensating for his years of patient understanding. Richard Mulligan (S.O.B.) and Sally Kellerman make a great pair of oversexed loonies.

Joseph Bologna (My Favorite Year) does most of the work carrying the picture, making his daredevil bus driver (a hardy breed, they) simply hilarious. The tough peer pressure from the fraternity of drivers goes back as far as ..only Angels Have Wings for its inspiration.

Stockard Channing is a personal favorite. You'd get the feeling that her talent was being wasted here, if she didn't look like she was having so much fun.

Relating too many of the jokes isn't doing potential discoverers of The Big Bus any favors. Let's just say if you think it's funny for Ned Beatty to walk nonchalantly into the radioactive hot room to unsnarl the isotope that Harold Gould can't move with his remote hand controls, then this show is for you. The scene is done in such a deadpan way, it almost sneaks by before the audience breaks up.

When a runaway pickup truck spears the bus like the small plane in one of the Airport sequels, the Cyclops hurries on to its oddball conclusion, sticking to its line of whimsy. Perhaps the reason The Big Bus didn't take off is because it maintains a consistent level of spoofy 'reality', whereas Airplane! lets the jokes fly every which way, shredding reality like an anarchic Tex Avery cartoon. Audiences watching The Big Bus have to work a bit, and maybe know know a bit too much, about old movies to get all the jokes here ... and they gags aren't as nonstop as in the Zucker & Abrahams movies.

Paramount's DVD of The Big Bus is just what's needed, a widescreen rendition of this show's whole 'scope frame of tacky production values. Especially fun are the purposely awful costumes, from Stockard Channing's dowdy dresses, to the Coyote Bus Lines' garish uniforms. There are no extras whatsoever, not even a rundown of the stars' filmographies.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
The Big Bus rates:
Movie: Very Good
Video: Very Good
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: none
Packaging: Amaray case
Reviewed: July 14, 2002