Where to watch Car 54, Where Are You?
1 Star
Brash NYC policeman Officer Gunther Toody is partnered with stiff, by-the-book Officer Francis Muldoon to protect an important mafia witness prior to testifying against orgainzed crime in Brooklyn, all the while dealing with their personal lives, overbearing spouses, common criminals, arms dealers, and their officious boss Captain Anderson.
I fell in love for the first time when I was 15. Or at least the feeling a hormonal teenage boy considers love to be. Melissa Mason was the name of the girl who had enchanted me during the spring and summer months of 1994. That was before she shattered my young heart by cheating on me during a camping trip over Labor Day weekend. I remember her and those times for many different reasons, but something that I always stuck in my memory was that she had a movie stub for Car 54, Where Are You? pinned to her wall.
Even at fifteen, I knew that Car 54 had been a box-office dud that quickly vanished from theaters and was ignored on home video. So, I had to ask, “What compelled you, a teen girl with no access to transportation, to travel to a theater, spend money, and spend your time watching Car 54?” I’ll never forget her answer that she and her friend went to see Sister Act 2, which was playing as the second half of a double feature with Car 54. And that made total sense.
Car 54, Where Are You? can barely be called a movie. Still, it is exactly the type of low-budget misfire that New Line Cinema was synonymous with before the Hobbits legitimized the mini-studio into a major player. This movie is filled with non-sensical digressions, subplots that are meaningless to the overall story, and, worst of all, musical numbers. I have zero references for the original TV series, but I would assume that fans of the show will be even more put off by the movie than casual viewers like myself. David Johansen, John C. McGinley, and Fran Drescher deserved a better project to pool their unique talents together on rather than the utterly unmemorable Car 54, Where Are You?
Directed by: Bill Fishman
Written by: Nat Hiken, Erik Tarloff, Ebbe Roe Smith
Starring: David Johansen, John C. McGinley, Fran Drescher