Cracking Up
Cracking Up
| 01 July 1977 (USA)
Cracking Up Trailers

What would happen if a 9.7 magnitude earthquake were to strike the L.A. area? This is what "Cracking Up" looks at from the lighter side. The movie is composed of individual skits of original material by the actors spun around this hypothetical disaster.

Reviews
miriamwebster

Dreadfully unfunny excrement featuring a handful of (later) truly funny folks (Edie McClurg, Fred Willard, Harry Shearer) who somehow survived this unpromising early-career mess. Hard to figure out what is going on here; looks like one of those SNL-inspired zip-budget sketch comedies (Groove Tube,Kentucky Fried Movie) of Seventies goosed up for mini-major studio distribution (American International) with gratuitous added footage (nudity, moronic storyline about post-earthquake LA) that has virtually nothing to do with scatter shot "comedic" skits. (Too bad they didn't edit in some laughs.) Film stock doesn't match and opening credits don't even list performers. Clearly aimed at undiscriminating drive-in crowd but there's not enough beer or weed the in world to make this steaming pile amusing.

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konajinx

I love The Firesign Theater, so the other night when I was browsing through the On Demand sections on TV and saw this movie listed and featuring two of the troupe, plus other guys I generally like like Harry Shearer and Fred Willard, I thought I'd check it out. After all, it was free, so nothing would be lost monetary-wise.I could only stand about 15 minutes of it, and then hurried up to fast-forward to the part with Shearer, which was bad as well. Definitely one of those lame late '70s curios that could have stood a lot better writing and laughs all around. It was just too weak to even be so bad it was still funny. Ah well.

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djeld13

The plot of this film really only stands to showcase the acts of comedy groups that deserved better (The Credibility Gap, The Ace Trucking Co., etc. -- in their own acts, which have nothing at all to do with the "story"), and doesn't enhance anything, but makes it more annoying and grinding to watch. It would have been nice to see these comedians in something tolerable, but, unfortunately, we get this. A movie by a group of people who could have made a much better movie, but didn't. Still, on the note of the Credibility Gap, I own and sometimes watch this movie (fast forwarding, of course, to those key parts), and I can only really recommend this movie to fans of the actors in it; otherwise, save an hour and skip it.

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William

This film opened in Seattle in 1978 as a bottom third of the triple bill in one drive-in (with a mini-ad), so I guess Arkoff at A.I.P knew he had a bomb in his hand. Part of the film is shot on video and transfered into film, so it's grainy looking. The rest of the film is on film, and you know you're in trouble when only 10% of the joke works. The title theme is annoying that it'll never leave your mind after seeing this film. The film is not on video, but it's on video in Japan. Maybe Japanese comedy fans might get 90% of the unfunny jokes. Big disappointment for any TUNNELVISION fans.

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