June Second, GTO stars in "The Last Ride"

I didn't get to see the movie. I'm curious if others here got a chance to catch it. I saw on the New Yort Times review that the movie goes out of its way to reconcile the present and the past GTOs and to sort of link the '70s with the 2000s through the revenge plot of Hopper getting out of prison. The family regains harmony and balance and the subtext is that the Pontiac 'family' tradition of GTOs is once again restored. Sort of 'restoration' of the King angle.

I was thinking about trying to find the '70 movie "Two lane blacktop" which was made soon after Easy Rider, and also starred Peter Fonda. In it the 'greasers' in a '55 Chevy (symbolizing the 'old school') race a '70 GTO (it's supposed to symbolize a slick, pre-packaged consumer culture as opposed to the more 'sincere' '55) across the southwestern desert. Like the "Vanishing Point" chase movie (with the Vietnam vet taking a Dodge Challenger into oblivion - also somewhere in the great southwest desert), it has some pretense as being 'existentalist.'

Smokey and the Bandit probably still ranks as the best (a relative term certainly) Pontiac propoganda movie ever made. Then again, the Trans Am was incredibly popular in that era. I believe they sold over 100,000 Trans Ams (as opposed to just Firebirds) for '78 - that's more GTO's than were ever sold in one year. The Bandit movie was a smash hit, but it was eclipsed by the mega smash Star Wars as a big budget summer of '77 movie - still, it came in second in box office reciepts.

So did people see the recent TV movie? Was it all interesting, or did it just seem like a long ad?