When does a car movie become junk and how much junk do you put up with?

I'm reading this months Road and Track and there is a hilarious article on the fast and furious movies.  I have seen all of them and own all but the last one.  It was just too much for me, to over the top.  I am a person who watches the  "batmen" movies just to see the Batmobile.  When the Joker blew up the Christian Bale Batmobile half way into the movie, I was done.  Game over for me.  I don't care what anyone wants to say about Justice league or Batman Vs Superman, just drive that Batmobile every ten minutes and I'll keep watching.  They could have Ben Affleck pick up a pizza in that thing for three hours, I'd keep watching.

But the last fast and furious, too much for me to swallow or ignore. I'm done.  The one before that was my limit, this one was over it.

I will put up with endless bad dialogue, bad acting or what have you just to see good car chases.  I don't expect a car movie to be Shakespeare, just have some great stunts.    Speaking of that:  The Dukes of Hazard movie is only worth the feature on how they did the jumps and stunts, really first rate.

So why are the fast and furious still going strong when Need for Speed really wasn't that bad.  It just wasn't, but it was roasted by the critics and no sequal  at a time when that is all hollywood does. I mean for real, fast and furious has all the cars drive out of a parking garage AND they remote start a NUCLEAR submarine.  But need for speed gets slammed for some bad stunts.

Probably Baby Driver and Rush were the last two movies to put a decent story with decent action.  I think that's about it in the last few years.  I get that it's hard to put the two together, but movies like the transporter also did a good job.

Two things I don't get:  Why does hollywood make such bad car movies when the audience is so easy to please and why don't they make more of them?  

So what are your cheesy favorites and what will you never watch again?  I can get through "days of thunder' with judicious use of the skip button, but I can't soak up all of the dialogue in that movie.  I love and adore Nicole Kidman, but she wasn't beleivable to me as a neurologist.  Skip ahead and the movie is great.

I can't watch any of the Fast and the Furious. 

When the guy pulled under the semi, and the sound guy kept adding shifty/acceleration sounds, I gave up.  Never watched another.

I think,if there were an award for sound engineering in a car movie, it would be very tough to beat Gumball Rally.

Stampie said:

I can't watch any of the Fast and the Furious. 

terrrible terrible movies. Sadly we owe a whole culture to them now

thedoc said:

Why does hollywood make such bad car movies when the audience is so easy to please and why don't they make more of them? 

That's exactly why they make them - the general audience is easy to please and doesn't care. about technical accuracy or any of that.  If the studios can make $100 million with each movie the way they are, they'll just keep cranking them out.  There's no reason for them to put any more effort into it.

Tokyo drift was the most entertaining one. Still E36 M3.

I don't mind the series moving from bad car movies to bad action movies though. But pretty much any good car movie is going to be boring to 90% of the people who actually pay to see movies.

Stampie said:

I can't watch any of the Fast and the Furious. 

I only lasted through the first 10 minutes. Rush, on the other hand, excellent movie.

A bad car movie usually becomes junk within the first 10 minutes of the movie.  If the only production value is to make it bigger and spectacular than the last...  You get what you get.  I am just waiting for the Fast & the Furious meet Scooby Do.

In reply to noddaz :

"And I wouldn't have watched it, too, if it wasn't for those pesky kids and their mangy mutt!"

Grizz said:

Tokyo drift was the most entertaining one. Still E36 M3.

I don't mind the series moving from bad car movies to bad action movies though. But pretty much any good car movie is going to be boring to 90% of the people who actually pay to see movies.

Ha.  I thought it was the worst!  Ymmv.

Baby driver is the winner at best movie versus horrible title.  Good car movie.

The princess bride (Not a car movie) held that title until baby driver.

Both movies and cars are passions of mine. Rarely, however, do they do intersect. 

“Drive” is both an excellent movie and an excellent car movie 

A car crash must have a flaming tire rolling out of the wreckage or I'm not interested.

penultimeta said:

 

“Drive” is both an terrible movie and an terrible car movie 

FTFY

Awful acting and a guy using the most conspicuous car in town as a getaway vehicle.

Want a good getaway vehicle? Use a grey crossover SUV or minivan. There's literally millions of them on the streets.

I literally exclaimed "berkeley you" at the hacked car swarm scene in Fast 8 the first time I saw it.

Let's see. There's Grand Prix, Rush, Vanishing Point, Bullitt, and then World's Fastest Indian if you're loose with the wheel count. The rest are either forgettable or they just out and out suck. 

F&F is like a train wreck.  Its terrible but you cant stop watching.  Everyone knows its awful, but its over the top awful in a fun way.  The car scenes are so terrible its hilarious.  Nobody watches it expecting to see an awesome car chase with anything approaching realism.

Related:  I never watched Need for Speed, but it was cheaper to have a shop make clones of all of those cars than it was to make the real cars.  I found that interesting.

Jay_W said:

Let's see. There's Grand Prix, Rush, Vanishing Point, Bullitt, and then World's Fastest Indian if you're loose with the wheel count. The rest are either forgettable or they just out and out suck. 

What about the original transporter and ronin?

In reply to wvumtnbkr :

And the original Gone in 60 seconds, the one without Nick cage.

I loved Fast and the Furious 7 because it just seemed like a great B-movie- despite the multi-million dollar bank account they had access to, it genuinely felt like an amateur film made by dedicated people on their off-hours, adding in bigger and bigger junk just because they wanted to make a name for themselves and it fit the narrative. Who can object to the rock flexing out of a medical cast, destroying a drone with an ambulance over an interpass just so you can get a minigun? FF7 has "The Room" vibes because in each scene you really don't know what will happen next, or what screwup will be made.

But I'm glad I saw 8 at a cheap theater. Hoo man, the movie's like if you allowed a grade-schooler to make his dinner- and the next looks like they're jumping onto the superhero movie bandwagon with Idris Elba.

I just

I just want a good "dumb" car movie

I just want to be a real human bean with another Drive

The original 60 seconds is a terrible movie that’s an excellent car movie. 

The F&F movies haven’t been about cars for some time now. The first couple were, but now they’re superhero buddy movies with a heist at the core. It’s all about family. At least, that’s what Dom keeps saying. 

I disagree that car guys are easily satisfied. We are the equivalent of hard core comic book nerds, yelling things like “the EVO would have been so much faster if you hadn’t converted it to RWD and keep hanging the tail out!”. We pick apart everything. 

Keith Tanner said:

. 

I disagree that car guys are easily satisfied. We are the equivalent of hard core comic book nerds, yelling things like “the EVO would have been so much faster if you hadn’t converted it to RWD and keep hanging the tail out!”. We pick apart everything. 

I tend to roll my eyes watching Top Gear...

Probably the worst that I’ve seen was the third Smokey and the Bandit.  I didn’t get very far into it when I asked to leave.  Usually my father hated throwing away money like that but t he seemed relieved I did.

RevRico said:

In reply to wvumtnbkr :

And the original Gone in 60 seconds, the one without Nick cage.

That movie is only good if you skip all of it but the last 45 minutes.

The F&F movies are my guilty pleasures, but I legitimately love the first and Tokyo Drift in a “so bad they’re good” sense. Part of the enjoyment factor for me is being able to watch and call bullE36 M3 on things. I owe a lot of my childhood interest in cars to the first few F&F movies and games like Need for Speed: Underground 2 and Most Wanted.