My favorite Yates.
Added 7/28/2009
Mother, Jugs, and Speed (Peter Yates, 1976)
The rest of Peter Yates' body of work is eclipsed by a single scene: the famous car chase in his 1968 film Bullitt that has been endlessly copied and is considered by many critics to be the best ever filmed. That scene eclipses the rest of the film's mediocrity, but Yates' other flicks don't have that scene, and have been generally recognized as the mediocre flicks that they are. Be that as it may, a Peter Yates film has a kind of cheesy magic all its own, even when it fails as spectacularly as does Mother, Jugs, and Speed, a film in which Yates picked up one of the best casts to appear on the big screen in a single movie that decade, and that's saying something.
The scene: Los Angeles, California, in the mid-seventies. LA has just privatized its ambulance service, and two upstart companies are competing for the same turf while the city decides which of the two is going to get the contract for the territory. One of those is the F&B Ambulance Service, run by greedy and corrupt Harry Fishbine (Until the End of the World's Allen Garfield). Fishbine's best driver is Mother (Bill Cosby), who's far too good for this place, but is something of a boozer behind the wheel and refuses to conform to the standards more above-board companies would impose upon him. His chief rival in the company is Murdoch (Dallas patriarch Larry Hagman), who's just as greedy and corrupt as Fishbine, but without the same social niceties. Jugs (Raquel Welch) is the company secretary with a secret, and Speed (Harvey Keitel) is the new guy, a cop on leave while he's being investigated for selling cocaine to schoolkids. No, this is not your mother's ambulance service. Things get going when Murdoch's partner Walker (Poltergeist's Michael McManus) gets bitten by a rat on a call and gets laid up just as Speed is trying to get a job to tide him over until the investigation is done. Thus begins the game of musical drivers. Meanwhile, Mother has perfected the art of snatching calls out from under the nose of Unity, the other ambulance company competing for the territory. Tom Mankiewicz' script builds plot twist after plot twist to a conclusion that is inevitable, and yet still surprising.
I don't want it to sound like I think Mother, Jugs, and Speed is a bad movie. In fact, of the Yates movies I've seen, this is probably my favorite. That may actually be because it's such a spectacular failure, and yet is still something of a success. As a comedy, it's horrendous. Bill Cosby couldn't seem more out of place than he does here, and even his best comedy bits fall flat here. And while Paul Schrader managed to get Harvey Keitel to be funny in Blue Collar, but that was a mean-spirited black comedy, while this is meant to be slapstick. To be fair to Keitel, who's a phenomenal actor, he's not the problem here. He does the best he can with the role he's given, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a piece of miscasting like this. Not only a comedian, but a romantic lead? Even Abel Ferrara couldn't pull that off. It's not romantic, it's not funny, it's as miscast as a movie can be. How can I call it a success on any level? Because while the substance is all but useless, you can almost taste the potential in this plot, especially when it comes to its climax. I get the feeling that a lot of pieces of this movie having to do with the actual plot got left on the cutting room floor, and had they been left in, this might have been a brilliant movie. Every time the movie focuses on its plot, such as the rivalry between Mother and Unity driver Albert (the great character actor Arnold Williams), it hits on all cylinders. When we get to the climax, a court scene where the city makes the decision on the contract, we actually care. The movie drops off a cliff after that, but when it works, it works.
It's an artifact of the seventies that, for many reasons, must be seen to be believed. You probably won't like it once you're finished, but while you're watching, you will not be able to look away. ** ½
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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This is one of the best movies ever.
Added 7/14/2009
This is one of the best movies ever. If I had a ambulance like mothers I would be the happiest EMT ever.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Mother, Jugs and Speed
Added 6/15/2009
The movie is a good movie the product was garbage. Didn't work. No return policy. Will not buy from them again.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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oldy but a goody
Added 4/5/2009
This very early movie by Bill Cosby and Raquel Welch is still a lot of fun to watch. Good clean humor.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Still holds up
Added 8/17/2008
As a former NYC paramedic I've got to say this movie, based on the antics of a 1970s ambulance agency, still holds up in the modern era. The cars and clothes styles may have changed a bit, but peoples are still peoples...
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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My favorite Yates.
Added 7/28/2009
Mother, Jugs, and Speed (Peter Yates, 1976)
The rest of Peter Yates' body of work is eclipsed by a single scene: the famous car chase in his 1968 film Bullitt that has been endlessly copied and is considered by many critics to be the best ever filmed. That scene eclipses the rest of the film's mediocrity, but Yates' other flicks don't have that scene, and have been generally recognized as the mediocre flicks that they are. Be that as it may, a Peter Yates film has a kind of cheesy magic all its own, even when it fails as spectacularly as does Mother, Jugs, and Speed, a film in which Yates picked up one of the best casts to appear on the big screen in a single movie that decade, and that's saying something.
The scene: Los Angeles, California, in the mid-seventies. LA has just privatized its ambulance service, and two upstart companies are competing for the same turf while the city decides which of the two is going to get the contract for the territory. One of those is the F&B Ambulance Service, run by greedy and corrupt Harry Fishbine (Until the End of the World's Allen Garfield). Fishbine's best driver is Mother (Bill Cosby), who's far too good for this place, but is something of a boozer behind the wheel and refuses to conform to the standards more above-board companies would impose upon him. His chief rival in the company is Murdoch (Dallas patriarch Larry Hagman), who's just as greedy and corrupt as Fishbine, but without the same social niceties. Jugs (Raquel Welch) is the company secretary with a secret, and Speed (Harvey Keitel) is the new guy, a cop on leave while he's being investigated for selling cocaine to schoolkids. No, this is not your mother's ambulance service. Things get going when Murdoch's partner Walker (Poltergeist's Michael McManus) gets bitten by a rat on a call and gets laid up just as Speed is trying to get a job to tide him over until the investigation is done. Thus begins the game of musical drivers. Meanwhile, Mother has perfected the art of snatching calls out from under the nose of Unity, the other ambulance company competing for the territory. Tom Mankiewicz' script builds plot twist after plot twist to a conclusion that is inevitable, and yet still surprising.
I don't want it to sound like I think Mother, Jugs, and Speed is a bad movie. In fact, of the Yates movies I've seen, this is probably my favorite. That may actually be because it's such a spectacular failure, and yet is still something of a success. As a comedy, it's horrendous. Bill Cosby couldn't seem more out of place than he does here, and even his best comedy bits fall flat here. And while Paul Schrader managed to get Harvey Keitel to be funny in Blue Collar, but that was a mean-spirited black comedy, while this is meant to be slapstick. To be fair to Keitel, who's a phenomenal actor, he's not the problem here. He does the best he can with the role he's given, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a piece of miscasting like this. Not only a comedian, but a romantic lead? Even Abel Ferrara couldn't pull that off. It's not romantic, it's not funny, it's as miscast as a movie can be. How can I call it a success on any level? Because while the substance is all but useless, you can almost taste the potential in this plot, especially when it comes to its climax. I get the feeling that a lot of pieces of this movie having to do with the actual plot got left on the cutting room floor, and had they been left in, this might have been a brilliant movie. Every time the movie focuses on its plot, such as the rivalry between Mother and Unity driver Albert (the great character actor Arnold Williams), it hits on all cylinders. When we get to the climax, a court scene where the city makes the decision on the contract, we actually care. The movie drops off a cliff after that, but when it works, it works.
It's an artifact of the seventies that, for many reasons, must be seen to be believed. You probably won't like it once you're finished, but while you're watching, you will not be able to look away. ** ½
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
|
This is one of the best movies ever.
Added 7/14/2009
This is one of the best movies ever. If I had a ambulance like mothers I would be the happiest EMT ever.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
|
Mother, Jugs and Speed
Added 6/15/2009
The movie is a good movie the product was garbage. Didn't work. No return policy. Will not buy from them again.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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