Box Office and Reception
Despite The Cannonball Run's commercial success, earning $72,179,579, making it the sixth highest grossing film of 1981, behind Raiders of the Lost Ark, On Golden Pond, Superman II, Arthur, and Stripes, the film received mixed to negative reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film a half-star out of four stars, calling it "an abdication of artistic responsibility at the lowest possible level of ambition. In other words, they didn't even care enough to make a good lousy movie". Variety described the film as "full of terribly inside showbiz jokes and populated by what could be called Burt and Hal's Rat Pack, film takes place in that redneck never-never land where most of the guys are beer-guzzling good ole boys and all the gals are fabulously built tootsies." Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote on his review that the film is "inoffensive and sometimes funny. Because there are only a limited number of variations that can be worked out on this same old highway race, don't bother to see it unless you're already hooked on the genre." It currently holds a 31% "Rotten" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 29 reviews.
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