HOOPER

Jesse's Rating: ★★★ Year:  1978 Cast:  Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jan-Michael Vincent Genre: Action/Comedy MPAA Rating: PG         Screen legend Burt Reynolds stars as Sonny Hooper in this goofy, harmless 4 A.M. cable flick about the trials and tribulations of the world's greatest movie stuntman. Along with Burton (I like to call him that), the other members of the cast have a lot of fun also because it feels like there's a lot of improvisation going on. While you watch this movie, you almost get the feeling that during some scenes, the actors didn't even know that the camera was rolling. But seriously though, it's okay. When you got Sally Field as Gwen, Sonny's loyal and loving girlfriend who stands by him no matter how dangerous the stunts, current Hollywood burnout Jan Michael Vincent as "Ski," the young and upcoming rookie to the stuntman world who looks to take Sonny's job (not intentionally though), funnyman Robert Klein as the director of the film that Hooper is based upon (it's a movie within a movie of course), and James Best (Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane from the tv show Dukes of Hazzard) as Sonny's assistant and friend, the result is a nifty collection of acting misfits. I'm sure after filming concluded, everybody who worked on this obvious tinseltown nugget probably became best friends. But heck, that's probably the case with any Reynolds film.          In the end, what you get from Hooper is uninhibited, tongue and cheek humor overload mixed with an exciting, sped up, documentary feel. The whole film concludes with a rocket car rambling through tons of explosions (Reynolds and Vincent are driving) and city wide destruction all for a perfect scene in the movie within a movie. Oh, did I mention the big Trans Am jumping across a 300 foot gorge to get to safety? Oh Hollywood, you never disappoint. Written by Jesse Burleson