A strangely affable piece of fluffy-headed 70’s drive-in comedic piffle which lazily coasts along on the faintest whiff of a plot. The story as far as it goes centers on a spacey solar-powered futuristic supervan equipped with lasers and a plush interior created by your standard flaky inventor (amiable nerd Tom Kindle). Evil corporate head T.B. Trenton (white-haired perennial bad guy thespian Morgan Woodard doing his patented so-slimy-he-slides-when-he-walks villainous bit) wants the supervan for himself so he can win a big annual van contest. Starry-eyed working class zhlub dreamer Morgan the Pirate (impish Mark Schneider) makes off with both the supervan and Trenton’s rebellious teen daughter Karen (cute, spunky, buxom brunette Katie Saylor). The expected wacky comic hi-jinks and crazy, careening slapstick car chases ensue.
Sure, the admittedly skimpy story ain’t much and the loosey-goosey pace meanders all over the place, but what this mama lacks in intricate and sophisticated narrative substance (plenty, to be brutally honest) it surely compensates for in giddy, good-natured, just-give-the-audience-what-they’ve-paid-to-see eager to please stupidity. For instance, there’s a totally gratuitous, but still welcome wet t-shirt contest. Moreover, a nearly endless barrage of funky-throbbing disco songs about vans and van culture blares away on the soundtrack throughout. Irv Goodnoff’s pretty, hazy, sunshine-soaked cinematography boasts a few fine sinuous tracking shots and radiates a distinctly 70’s warm’n’fuzzy glow (coincidentally, Goodnoff also shot the equally asinine, but still awesome “The Van”!). Blustery custom car king George Barris puts in a guest appearance and a sweetly mellow laid-back vibe permeates the entire feature. Why, we even got slack direction from Lamar Card, a sappy romantic sub-plot, lots of filler footage of the van contest, so-loving-they’re-downright-fetishistic close-ups of resplendently tacky van decals, dated CB lingo (“We’re doin’ it to it”), a gang of hostile bikers, a jailbreak, delightfully politically incorrect comic relief lisping homosexuals, and absolutely no pretense to get in the way of the enjoyably goofy’n’silly fun.
