Redundant and unnecessary.

People are voting emotionally.

Admirable film.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

It's remarkable that the favorite subject for the rising trend of parody movies in the 1970s end, and the 1980s start, was the disaster movies. Just remember (The Big Bus - 1976), (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! - 1978), (Airplane! - 1980), and (Airplane II: The Sequel - 1982). Though, I deem it natural because of what the disaster movies caused of satiety during the whole 70s decade. Plus, some real disastrous experiences that came in the late 70s such as (The Swarm - 1978), (The Concorde ... Airport '79 - 1979), and (When Time Ran Out - 1980), which were parodies of themselves already ! As you see, The Big Bus took the initiative to mock at that genre, which inaugurated yet another genre. And while it isn't Airplane, it has the seed of its fresh craziness. For instance : the matter of the lead being accused of "eating" people, the cemetery scene, and the bar fight; which's the movie's best moment.Originally, it seems as if Airplane took a lot from this movie, like : the character of a pilot with a troubling past, who's needed suddenly to save the day. How his ex-girlfriend is on the same ride. Or how they come back to each other in the end. Let alone a scene where the stewardesses demonstrate to the riders what to do while the trip is in danger ! The bus was huge with fabulous design. The running gag of the bus's singer was super. And since the first time I watched him years ago, till now, I believe that Joseph Bologna is one the most underrated comedians ever. That guy was great. He could do cracking comedy with the littlest efforts. It's a shame that he wasn't a star in many movies or TV shows as he should have been.Director James Frawley has many funny bones, and bad luck as well; because he didn't direct more movies. However, his comic energy can be felt in countless TV episodes of shows like Columbo, Magnum P.I., Tales of the Gold Monkey, and Vengeance Unlimited. Or a movie like The Muppet Movie (1979). Now, to the negative points. And the first one comes to my mind is Stockard Channing. MY GOD, who thought of hiring her in a leading role in a comedy ??? She looks like an awful version of Elizabeth Taylor, and I don't like Elizabeth Taylor in the first place ! Channing has no beauty, no talent for comedy, so why she's here anyway ??!!The characters on the bus were few, and even fewer of them were interesting. David Shire's music is all the time excited, maybe for parodying the music of other disaster movies, but eventually it didn't work for me. Some of the jokes didn't hit the "funny" mark, like when all the riders had to wear bizarre costumes in the end. And some of them weren't utilized smartly, like the idea of how the evil guy lives in a metal cocoon. Or attaching the scientist father into the ground against his well, which while being creative, it was used laconically. Speaking of laconic things, the end is, with fabricated defeat for the evil guys, and such an incomprehensible surviving for the good guys (I still don't know how the lead saved the bus over the cliffhanger !). Add to that, extremely dull ending shot, and you'll get why this good movie feels not so good for many viewers. It is short, and runs out of clever ideas nearly halfway through it. But for the most part, it's a wonderful comedy, little ahead of its time, and the true disaster is that it isn't any famous.

The saying goes, dying is easy, comedy is hard. You ain't kiddin'. About 30 minutes into "The Big Bus" I was wishing for death. A spoof of disaster films that was made when disaster films were still popular, "The Big Bus" is one of those films that keep your interest because you keep searching the actor's faces to see if they betray any trace of the desperation that must come from trying to make the most of terrible material. When a film is as boring as this, you have a lot of time for random thoughts: I watched a puffy-looking Stockard Channing (resembling 70's era Elizabeth Taylor) and wondered how she managed the magic act of salvaging her career after this; Sally Kellerman performs as if she's in a funnier film than the one I'm watching; I wonder why all of Lynn Redgrave's scenes fall so flat; I speculate over what sort of nepotism or deal with the devil resulted in the casting of the hammy and thuddingly unfunny Stuart Margolin; I think about the studio contract system and the feckless charm of John Beck; I try to count how many films in which Ruth Gordon did the same "foul-mouthed granny" bit ... anything to keep me from paying attention to how ugly this film looks (It was so flatly lit, I thought it was a Universal film) and how badly I wanted it to end. Comedy is so subjective and personal, I totally understand that some people may find it hilarious. I'm just in the camp that didn't laugh even once. View at your own risk - it may become your favorite film, or, like me, you may want to scratch your eyes out at the 30 minute point.

Is a society that laughs so hard at its own fads humble, narcissistic, or both? This forgotten spoof, four years before "Airplane!," appeared after years of "Airport" and Irwin Allen films, just as disaster movies were being replaced by the Spielberg shockers that started with "Jaws" and led to "Jurassic Park" (X-treme Discovery Channel, but that's another story). Cylops, a nuclear-powered, double-decker, articulated luxury bus (an impressive set of props & sets) finishes development despite sabotage attacks that cripple the specially trained drivers. Venerable driver Dan Torrance (Bologna) is hired as a replacement even though he's in disgrace after a disastrous run in which he was accused of eating his passengers while stranded! The bus's designer, Kitty (Channing) is his former love whom he dumped after cheating on her repeatedly. The film is a mostly unsubtle jab at all-star disaster movies in which subplots are resolved by the characters being forced to find common ground to survive the burning building, burning airship, overturned liner, earthquake, et. al. Scruffy engineer Scotty (Beatty) and a fugitive housewife (Gordon) are openly based on George Kennedy's & Helen Hayes' characters in "Airport," respectively. There are also a failed priest (Auberjonois, spoofing his "MASH" role), an oversexed, vengeful fashion maven (Redgrave), a spoiled, bickering couple celebrating their divorce (Mulligan & Kellerman) and a vet disgraced for experimenting with lapine birth control (Dishy). Shull, as a terminally ill man, parodies Lionel Barrymore in "Grand Hotel," reminding us of how uncomfortably similar that old classic is to "The Towering Inferno." The bus's nemesis is a powerful family (Ferrer & Margolin) who create disasters to destroy technical innovation & are apparently responsible for most disasters, real or fictional, filmed since the 1950s, including the "Titanic." The script is wildly erratic, ranging from comic genius to contrived stupidity. The latter include the opening press conference & the encounter with the pickup truck. But the former include most of the scenes involving the bus, including the one in which Dan deals with a bomb, which was redone dramatically in "Speed" nearly 20 years later. Cyclops has a bowling alley, swimming pool & dining room, all hilariously reduced to dollhouse-size, as well as self-changing tires, an Automatic Washing Mechanism (AWM) and soda-pumping & luggage-ejection features. Despite its contrivances, the story holds together amazingly & even provides real suspense up to the very end. Bologna is a bit hammy as the troubled Bus Captain, but Channing is brilliant, both believable & funny, as the nuclear scientist/love interest. The scene in which she drives while sitting on the lap of unconscious co-driver Shoulders (Beck) is almost enough in itself to make the whole film worthwhile. But Murphy Dunne nearly steals the show as the most offensive lounge piano player ever ("Thank yooou!"). Despite the in-your-face satire, look for some very subtle comic touches like the jab at TV news & the pictures in Iron Man's hall.

There's a funny story about this movie. My dad said he remembered liking it and showed it to me. I was eager to see it, since he raved on it. During the movie, I laughed a little bit, maybe once or twice, but that's it. I didn't want to make him sad, so I pretended to laugh. When it was done, my dad and I didn't talk. For a while, we turned the movie off in silence. After about two minutes, my dad says "Wow, I..uhh...don't remember it being that bad. Sorry.". I was glad that he hated it too. We hated it together. It was not a funny movie at all. Actually, towards the end, he asked me if I wanted to turn it off, since it was so bad, but I said no. I didn't know that was what he meant, though. Look, don't see this. PLEASE! Just don't. Save an hour and a half of your life. Please.