Fridae

"Charlie Bronson" (Dax Shepard), a reformed criminal under the Witness Protection Programme takes his brainy prospective bride (Kristen Bell), burns rubber in a muscle car all the way from a sleepy town in northern California to LA to beat a deadline for her big job interview while being tailed by the US Marshal (Tom Arnold) protecting him, stalked by his girlfriend's jealous and still-possessive ex-boyfriend (Michael Rosenbaum), who has enlisted Bronson's former criminal partner (Bradley Cooper), who wouldn't mind hunting him down and doing very painful things to him as payback for ratting on him — all while a small-town cop (Jess Rowland) and his partner (Carly Hatter) on the traffic beat keep running into the merry procession.

From the looks of it, Dax Shepard is a fan of chase caper films and big, sprawling comedies like Cannonball Run and It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, populated by a dizzying all-star cameo cast playing eccentric characters working at cross purposes against each other in a mad rush for the prize, whatever it may be. That's the gimmick of Hit and Run.

The twist is how the genre is adapted for the new millennium. Aside from Dax Shepard's unintentionally homophobic and racist but really nice protagonist, the characters in the film exist in the modern day and come with modern day problems that mask the datedness of the film's gimmick: his girlfriend has a degree in non-violent conflict resolution (which comes in handy in the film's several stand-offs), the US Marshal has temper management issues as well as being accident prone, the ex is walking example of why sensible people should avoid Facebook and social media entirely, the former criminal partner is one of those easily-offended people you meet on the street every day, and the gay cop stationed in the middle of nowhere is a fan of a Grindr-like app. So in between the mandatory car chases that come with the genre, characters take turns to steal the film in very talky but hilariously un-PC comic routines.

From an unremarkable start that bursts into multiple, unpredictable storylines that keep getting more and more outrageous and outrageously funny, Hit and Run feels like Quentin Tarantino just adapted a chase caper written by Elmore Leonard.