Genre Comedy

Grand Theft Auto (1977)

Item: Grand Theft Auto
Rating: 3.0
Author: Ross McLaren

★★★ — Grand Theft Auto (1977)

There's a particular kind of film that doesn't want to be important. It wants to make you spill your popcorn laughing, it wants tyres screeching and cops flying off embankments, and it wants you grinning like an idiot by the time the credits roll. Grand Theft Auto is exactly that film, and it knows it, which is half the battle.

What makes this one slightly more interesting than your average late-70s rubber-burning romp is the name behind the camera: Ron Howard, here making his directorial debut. Yes, the same Ron Howard who would later give us prestige thrillers and Oscar bait. Before all that, he was a young bloke with a script, a budget held together with string, and a lot of cars to smash up. Fair play to him, honestly. You can feel the enthusiasm in every chaotic frame.

The film slots in comfortably alongside Smokey and the Bandit and The Cannonball Run, those gloriously daft motorised comedies that the late 70s produced like a factory line. Same DNA, same pleasures. Dumb cops who can't catch a cold, last-minute escapes that defy physics, slapstick broad enough to land on a drive-in screen thirty metres away. It's tongue-in-cheek throughout, never once pretending to be something it isn't. The stunts are practical and loud, and there's real joy in that, nothing computer-generated, just metal crumpling and engines roaring and stuntmen earning their wages.

There's also a wholesome, almost cartoonish quality to the whole thing. A live-action Saturday morning adventure with more horsepower. Everyone on screen looks like they're having an absolute blast, and that energy crosses the screen. It's contagious in the best way. You find yourself leaning forward not because the story demands it, but because the fun is genuinely infectious.

Now, I'm not going to pretend the film holds up as anything more than cheerful junk food. The plot is paper-thin, the characters are flat as a punctured tyre, and some of the humour has aged about as gracefully as a pair of flared trousers. By any serious critical measure, it's a slight piece of work. But applying serious critical measures to Grand Theft Auto feels like turning up to a fairground in a suit. You're missing the point entirely.

What it does work as, brilliantly, is a time capsule. This is drive-in cinema at its most pure and unpretentious: fast, funny, disposable, and oddly charming. If you're interested in where Howard came from before the prestige stuff, or if you just want to understand the car chase craze that gripped American cinema in this era, it's a genuinely valuable watch. I've always had a soft spot for this period of Hollywood, and if you've seen my thoughts on American Graffiti, you'll know I find something deeply appealing about the way early-70s and late-70s American film captured a certain restless, wheels-on-the-road energy. This is the scrappier, sillier cousin of that tradition.

Forgettable as art. Totally enjoyable as a Friday night with no expectations and something cold in your hand. Roll up, rev the engine, enjoy the ride, and don't ask it to be anything it never promised to be.

Three stars.

Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1977 | Watched: 2025-09-12

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