The Van (1977) Review

Can a comedy film from the 70’s dealing in Vansplotation and having a role with Danny Divito make it at least okay? Let’s find out!

The Scores

Interest: 3/10

Acting: 3/10

Storyline: 4/10

Intensity: 3/10

Fights Guns or Otherwise: 4/10

Nudity: 10/10

Director Score: 2/10

Musical Score: 4.5/10

Dialogue 5/10

Logic In The Film: 8/10

The Van is a 1977 film. It is in the genre of comedy. Its run time is one hour and thirty-two minutes. The three main stars are Stuart Goetz (Known for Spy Hard, Mimic, Traveler, and Sonic the Hedgehog animated series, all for music departments.) Deborah White (Known for Mallrats, St. Elsewhere, The Waltons, and Kojak as an actress) and Harry Morgan Moses (Known for Dan Miller, Everybody Hates Chris, Living Luminaries: On the Serious Business of Happiness, and The Van). This film also has Danny DeVito as a small character in the film as well. The Director is Sam Grossman and he has done pretty much nothing besides this film. A quick summary of the film is “A kid saves up money for shaggin’, and maybe even love.” Let’s take a deeper look at The Van!

Interest: This film was dull, boring, and just not eye catching at all. It felt like the movie was playing in slow motion at times because of how dull and lame this film really was. I will give it this, it was one of the first films to show what teenagers were really doing, instead of the wholesome beach party movies. It does have sex and drugs and actual situations in real life. But even with those merits, its honestly really boring.

Acting: Everyone in this film acts okay. Danny DeVito is the honest shining star in the film, and sadly he is only in the film for fifteen twenty minutes tops. The actors almost don’t know what they’re doing and it is a little strange and painful, but most movies in the 70’s were like this, if they were a teenage comedy.

Storyline: The storyline is paper thin at best. It's a teen comedy movie that is trying to be funny, and show what teens really do. It does what it needs to on the latter half, but that first half falls short. it’s shallow, weak and is just an atoms width thick. I suppose it could also be a romance comedy also, but nothing is romantic, no one does things in a real way, and just fail to matter.

Intensity: There is no intensity at all in the film. it is supposed to be a chill film (Pot is involved, as is drinking), but the overwhelming chillness of the movie out weighs the 4 “intense” moments were a fight could have broke out but didn’t.

Fights, Guns or Otherwise: So physical fights aren’t really even a thing, although they are threatened. Verbal fights do happen frequently, carrying this category on its back. And mental scarring also isn’t a thing in the film either. The verbal lashings come in different size packages, from “you’re a pig!” to ‘You’re an ass!”, and it does this pretty frequently. It doesn’t seem to have any weight behind the threats though as who they are said to is more or less just ignored.

Nudity: There is nudity strewn all about in the film. I’d say, a quarter of the film is about nudity and sex. If this is your cup of tea thing go to it, But I will give fair warning, there is also a “light” rape scene. What I mean by Light is it was unwanted advances upon a girl, and things get super awkward, I just want to let the potential viewers know.

Director Score: The Director Sam Grossman has no idea what a director does for a film. It’s as if a horny teenager decided to make a movie he thought would be funny. I don’t know what the script was for the film, but holy crap if it was worse kudos to the director but this turned out worse than the room on making something at all happen, and if the director did this, why wasn’t he just fired and another one found to replace him. This film is just bad.

Musical Score: The musical Score of the film was okay. It referenced a song presumably popular at the time about a Chevy van (even though the van was a Dodge van in the film) but it wasn’t bad. There was some music referencing tone of the film, but nothing to completely change the tone from good times to bad times. What I mean is it helped the transition, but didn’t engulf you into those emotions. I feel that a good musical composition can engulf and envelop you, to feel a completely different way without actions or a sense of visual.

Dialogue: The dialogue in the film is competent. It is also 60’s and 70’s lingo, but I can digest it, I can use context clues, I can look up something real quick if I didn’t know, but it wasn’t like it was in an alien language with no subtitles. It mostly dealt with sex, drugs, and racing vans, but I mean It isn’t hard to understand.

Logic: The logic in the film seems alright. Everything obeys the laws of physics for the most part (a car flip may not actually be grounded in it, but seems plausible) The only other thing I can possible thing of that seems strange was his water bed in his van busts once, and they just fix/ refill it and it is just get a non waterbed, clearly it isn’t going to hold up since you’ve had the van for three days or less. Otherwise I think the logic is solid.

Did I enjoy this film? No, not at all actually. Would I suggest it? Only if you want to rip into it, have a look at the past of films, or just find something this boring and mundane interesting. This film I would not recommend unless you like Manos: the hands of fate type style movies where this hour and a half film feels like its is a 9-hour documentary on jack-crap (really trying to not use my super special swear words). It is much more pain, than any pleasure you could ever feel, and my god don’t watch this film! The score is 46.5 percent and it is just not worth it without just ragging on it for being a pile of crap. Until Next Time!