Grand Theft Auto is a notable movie in the fact that it was Ron Howard’s first movie that he directed. Other than that Grand Theft Auto is the usual Roger Corman low brow entertainment.
Don’t get me wrong, really this is not a horrible movie, it is just not great. The story is very simple, Ron Howard’s character becomes engaged to a rich girl whose father is going to run for governor of California. Supposedly she is already engaged to some other rich guy who is a twit. Since Ron Howard’s character is poor and a no name his fiance’s family does not approve of him.
So his fiance ends up stealing her dad’s Rolls Royce and they head for Las Vegas to elope. Her parents hire some security guys to stop them and also word gets out on a local radio station that the parents are paying $25,000 to whomever brings them back to LA.
The rest of the movie consists of them driving to Las Vegas and people trying to stop them along the way, of course wrecking a lot of cars in the process, with the grand finale ending with the Rolls getting smashed at a Demolition Derby. The stunts are ok, at least it was real, no cheesy computer animation.
After a while you do get tired of seeing idiots wrecking cars, but the movie is short enough that you never get too bored.
Ron Howard’s father and brother play in this along with his Happy Days costar Marion Ross.
The DVD had a few extras on it, I did watch the low quality interview between Howard and Corman, that was interesting, to a point. Ron Howard wanted to be in control and several times cut Roger Corman off or changed the subject completely. I hate it when people do that, once I saw Jay Leno totally cut Ben Stein off in a story for some idiotic joke, trust me, Ben Stein’s story was a lot better than the Leno joke!
There were also trailers for Eat My Dust, which is actually the movie Ron Howard did before this that opened the door for him to direct.
Once again, this is not high cinema, if you see it on the rental shelf, pick it up, there are certainly worse ways to spend time.