Pontiac Moon * (1994, Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, Ryan Todd) – Classic Movie Review 8017

Director Peter Medak’s 1994 Pontiac Moon is a juvenile road comedy drama with unrealised pretensions that casts Ted Danson as absent-minded-professor Washington Bellamy, a dad who takes his young kid Andy (Ryan Todd) off in the old Pontiac car of the title to a National Park at the time of the Apollo XI Moon shot.

Along the way they start to bond and meet various stereotypes instead of characters in a feeble script trying for symbolism and importance and falling flat on its face. Even the Sixties atmosphere, normally so accurate in US nostalgia movies, does not ring true.

Danson’s usual appeal wears perilously thin here and Mary Steenburgen is lost as Katherine Bellamy, the mother who has not left the house in years. The only possible appeal is to the young audience who enjoyed Danson’s Getting Even with Dad.

Also in the cast are Eric Schweig, Cathy Moriarty, Max Gail, Lisa Jane Persky, J C Quinn, John Schuck and Don Swayze.

Pontiac Moon is directed by Peter Medak, runs 107 minutes, is released by Paramount, is written by Finn Taylor (story and screenplay) and Jeffrey D Brown (screenplay), is shot by Thomas Kloss, is produced by Robert Schaffel and Youssef Vahabzadeh, and is scored by Randy Edelman.

Danson and Steenburgen married on 7 October 1995 and have two children.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 8017

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