EARLY ACCESS ~ CANNONBALL 2 (YT EDIT)

Cannonball Run II (1984) is somehow even dumber, louder, and more gloriously unhinged than the first one — and here’s the shocker: we loved it even more. Neither of us had seen it before, and going in blind made the experience feel like discovering a secret stash of 80s chaos we didn’t know we needed.

If the first Cannonball Run felt like a celebrity road trip that accidentally became a movie, the sequel feels like the cast threw a party, forgot to stop filming, and then just released whatever they got. The plot is even thinner, the jokes are broader, and the commitment to nonsense is absolute. And weirdly? That’s exactly why it works.

Burt Reynolds is fully in “I am not even pretending this is serious” mode, and it’s glorious. Dom DeLuise turns the volume up to unsafe levels, doing bits inside bits inside bits. Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. are still running their scam, still charming as hell, and still looking like they wandered in from a Vegas lounge. And the cameos? It’s a parade. You stop reacting to them after a while because the movie simply refuses to slow down.

What really surprised us is how much looser and more playful this one feels. The first film has that “trying to be a movie” energy. The sequel? Zero interest in being respectable. It’s pure hangout nonsense. Everyone is clearly having a blast, no one seems overly concerned with structure, and the movie just sprints from gag to gag like it’s late for something.

The humor is stupid. The accents are worse. The logic is nonexistent. And yet… it’s insanely watchable. There’s something deeply charming about a movie that is this unconcerned with impressing you. It’s not clever. It’s not tight. It’s not polished. It’s just fun — and sometimes that’s more than enough.

We genuinely didn’t expect to like it more than the first, but here we are. Cannonball Run II leans harder into the insanity, the celebrity chaos, and the “why not?” energy, and it totally won us over. It’s cinematic junk food, yes — but it’s the good kind. The kind you keep reaching for even when you know better.

Sometimes a movie doesn’t need to be good. It just needs to be committed. And this one is committed to the bit all the way to the finish line.