Product Details

• Actors: Robin Williams, Tim Robbins, Pamela Reed, Fran Drescher, Zack Norman
• Directors: Roger Donaldson
• Writers: Ken Friedman
• Producers: Roger Donaldson, Charles Roven, Ted Kurdyla
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Orion / MGM
• VHS Release Date: February 9, 1999
• Run Time: 97 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0792898818
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #377,377 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Robin Williams is in his edgily desperate mode as a Queens car salesman whose life is in turmoil. He's fooling around with someone else's wife, his marriage is on the rocks, and he has to sell 12 cars in 12 days or he will lose his job. He's so desperate that he even tries to pitch a sale to a widow at a funeral. As if he didn't have enough problems, the crazed husband (Tim Robbins) of one of his coworkers bursts into the car show room with an automatic weapon and takes everyone hostage. His wife has been cheating on him (not with Williams) and he's ready to go postal unless he finds out who's been sleeping with her. It's up to Williams to try to keep everyone from getting killed. But as hard as Williams and Robbins work, they can't make this film more than sporadically funny--and that's only because Williams is at his most spritzingly frenetic. --Marshall Fine

Product Description

Whether he's pitching himself or the high-priced luxury cars at Turgeon Auto Sales, Joey O'Brien (Robin Williams) never lets a day go by without "doing" someone good. But Joey's schmoozed through life on cruise control for way too long...and now he's riding in the hot seat! Co-starring Tim Robbins (The Player), Pamela Reed (Kindergarten Cop) and Fran Drescher ("The Nanny"), Cadillac Man is a non-stop joy ride of comic lunacy! Joey O'Brien's got some serious troubles. A mafioso wants his hide. The women in his lifean ex-wife, a space cadet girlfriend and someone else's wifeare all trying his patience. And to top it off, Turgeon Auto's inventory is priced to goand so is he unless sales pick up. But just when Joey thought it could get no worse itdoes! Into the showroom walks Larry (Robbins), a lunkhead terminator with an axe to grind. He's notexactly looking for a new set of whitewalls. He's loaded down with explosives and looking for the man who's been "doing" his wife! Now in a life-or-death situation, Joey is forced to do the one thinghe does best...lie!

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Reasons They Hated It Are The Reasons I Love It, September 15, 2001

By 

Daniel A. Fincke "thegreatfandincke" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cadillac Man [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Critics (and I guess most audiences) seem to dislike this movie for looking like one kind of movie and yet turning into another and for not deciding whether it wants to be a comedy or a hostage drama. The beauty of the film the many times I have seen it is that it DOES make one both "laugh and cry," or, if not cry, "laugh and care" as though the characters are worth emoting with a little. Why is that bad? I don't know.

The other major criticism is similar, it is that the film should be either about sly carsalesman in a competition for their jobs or it should be about a hostage crisis and not spend the entire exposition setting us up for a car sales competition. Again, that the movie should pick what it is about more clearly, is the critique. This criticism seems thoroughly not to feel with the movie but impose expectations of formula unfairly on a surprising movie. The movie sets up the audience to empathize with the screwed up priorities of its screwed up protagonist (Robin Williams) only to put those priorities and all of his life in perspective with the insurgance of Tim Robbins' character into the situation.

It is a great movie about rediscovering what is important when there is a gun to one's head. AND a really funny comedy, so it is a movie that works both dramatically and comedically and genuinely turns me from a little sleazed by the beginning to feeling a little warm and gooey inside by the end. If only more films moved in that direction, daring to break with formula and introduce genuine drama while still managing to uplift the spirit by the end in a way that feels genuine, maybe we'd have more than one or two comedies worth watching every year.
Plus, Tim Robbins and Robin Williams are perfect in their roles and there's always the pre-nanny Fran Drescher to get a kick out of.

A movie that is definitely worthwile and deserving of the DVD release that it likely will be unthinkingly and unjustly denied.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Underrated Near-Masterpiece, October 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Cadillac Man [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Largely unknown and underrated, this film is truly marvelous. It was skewered by critics when it first opened with them calling it "uneven" and "odd." In fact, I hadn't known about it till a friend recommended it to me. When I rented it, I was truly touched. I understood that the film was supposed to be funny, but I can never say I truly laughed. Certainly not because it failed at this, but it is because these "jokes" and "one-liners" are who we are. This film represents the common men of society: hard-working, flawed, and sometimes easily manipulated. It carries out everything about the average joe (like me) so movingly and (oh yes) even powerfully that you don't know what genre this movie belongs in. In my local Blockbuster Video store, it is in the comedy section. In other video rental stores I've been in, it was in drama. Yet this movie belongs in a category of its own: the LIFE category. It is a film about the beauty and downfall of all of us. The cast: Williams, Robbins, and all the gals involved were perfectly cast in their stereotypical roles. It isn't a by-the-numbers cheery little comedy, but it is realistic and, just like in life, shows how we can start out from slapstick and work our way down to being held hostage at gunpoint having our lives on the line.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Comic Hostage Drama?, March 24, 2001

By 

Diego Banducci (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cadillac Man [VHS] (VHS Tape)

That's the basic problem. This film can't seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be a comedy or a hostage drama.

The acting is really pretty good -- how can it not be with Robin Williams, Tim Robbins and Fran Drescher? But the audience never knows whether to laugh or cry.

Five stars for creativity and taking a big chance. Unfortunately it doesn't work.