Moving Violations


Moving Violations is a 1985 comedy film starring John Murray, Jennifer Tilly, Brian Backer, Sally Kellerman, Nedra Volz, Clara Peller, Wendie Jo Sperber and Fred Willard. It was directed by Neal Israel and was the film debut of Don Cheadle.

Synopsis

The film follows a group of people in Birch County, California, a fictionalized city/county which is very similar to real-life Los Angeles, who, after being ticketed for numerous traffic violations, and as a result lose their licenses and driving privileges, are ordered by Judge Nedra Henderson to attend a driving course program in order to get their licenses and their vehicles back. However, the assigned teacher for this course, Deputy Henry "Hank" Halik, is also conspiring with the judge in a plan to make sure these offenders fail miserably, and at any cost, so they can sell their impounded vehicles. Their actions make one of the offended individuals, landscaper Dana Cannon, very suspicious of their scheme and he enlists his fellow students to expose the plot.

Cast

Writer and director Israel himself attended traffic school after having been pulled over by a police officer for doing an illegal U turn.:
I made the mistake of arguing, and that was very foolish because the cop called in and found I had 13 tickets outstanding. Plus I had one moving violation that I'd never settled. I went right to jail and did not collect $200. They put me in a cell with an arsonist. He had just blown somebody up. It was a very unsettling experience. I went to traffic school for a very long time, and I had to go to a whole lot of different courts with different jurisdictions. It was a real hassle. So I suggested the idea of the film to Joe Roth, our producer, and he had just been to traffic school, too, so he thought it was great.

However he says "Traffic school is boring... I interviewed a lot of people, including a man who owned a traffic school, but all his stories were boring. So we made up everything."
Robert Conrad appeared in the film unbilled as a favor to Pat Proft, who was an old friend. A spokesman from the studio said "We'd describe it as an uncredited star turn. It's no different from Robert de Niro in Brazil or Darren McGavin's part in The Natural, neither of which was mentioned in the credits."

Reception

The film was reviewed poorly by Janet Maslin at The New York Times, who described it as an "especially weak teen-age comedy even by today's none-too-high standards." In a later appraisal, David Nusair of Reelfilm.com wrote that Moving Violations contains "enough laughs to be had here to warrant a mild recommendation."