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Who Likes Jugs?

MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED

Um, I kind of want to say that Mother, Jugs & Speed is the best movie we've got on Fox Movie Channel right now. But then I am quick to remember Point Break and Die Hard and Romancing the Stone and some of the other shiny gems of our catalog, and I realize I must reserve declaring a superlative best. But this one is way the hell up there.

I didn't watch the Peter Yates' film Mother, Jugs & Speed for months because I was superlatively turned off by the title. Specifically the word Jugs in the title, unsurprisingly. But I wound up watching it on the recommendation of my boss, which was way fortunate because it's so good. (Plus now I get the title. Which I could explain to you, but I won't, and instead just leave the mystery hanging out there as another impetus for you to watch the movie.)

Mother, Jugs & Speed is about a lawless Los Angeles ambulance crew and the many situations - ranging from misadventures to disasters - that the drivers encounter and alternately create. It stars one of film's all time hotties, Raquel Welch, one of America's great funnymen, Bill Cosby, and one of modern cinema's renowned actors, Harvey Keitel. And Larry Hagman's in it too. It's laugh out loud funny, heartbreaking at moments, and really well written. And Bill Cosby's character wears fingerless gloves, drinks beer in his ambulance and receives a massage involving multiple vibrators. What other movie offers even a fraction of all that?

Something awesome happened in American cinema in the 70s. Filmmakers started making movies about real people, real behavior, real life crazy shit. Like sex, drugs, death, drugs, indifference and more drugs. And they dared to be irreverent in their treatment of these things. Like M*A*S*H, the classic of the genre (if you want to call it a genre), this movie is brilliantly irreverent, delicately dancing between black and poignant and hilarious. Unlike M*A*S*H, Mother, Jugs & Speed has a well-constructed story, with characters that develop and storylines that pay off. Even the jokes have legs. But this smartly dovetailing plot is really just a backdrop to the performances, the comedy, the irreverence and the heart. M, J and S even manages to answer the question of what a human life is worth, and it does so within a minute or so of the movie's start.

Each one is worth $42.50. Plus mileage.