Goodbye Pork Pie

 (New Zealand)

By VARIETY STAFF

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Ama. Director Geoff Murphy; Producer Geoff Murphy, Nigel Hutchinson; Screenplay Geoff Murphy; Camera Alun Bollinger; Editor Michael Horton; Music John Charles (dir.); Art Director Kai Hawkins
 
Kelly Johnson
Tony Barry
Claire Oberman
Shirley Gruar
Bruno Lawrence
John Beach
 

In Goodbye Pork Pie, Easy Rider meets the Keystone Kops. Following the classic road formula a car chase covers the length of the country and it is a major plus that the pace, fun and general mayhem are such that the pic does not get upstaged by the spectacular scenery.

In the breathing spells between, characters that might have been ciphers - the young punk on the run, the girl hitch-hiker and others whose paths intersect the speeding car - are given human dimensions.

Near the top of New Zealand's North Island Kelly Johnson steals a rental car and heads south, picking up a couple of passengers before he has gone very far. One is pursuing the wife who has walked out on him, and he persuades Johnson to extend what was to have been a short dash into a 1,000-mile marathon, taking in a car ferry crossing on the way.

Claire Oberman is a liberated blond whose frank confession that she is a virgin, given in the same breath with which she introduces herself, leads to a private $2 bet between the two men that this will be changed.

(Color) Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1981. Running time: 100 MIN.