AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Mr-Fusion "The Big Bus" is beyond absurd, rekindling the same sense of humor in "Airplane!" and flooring it into complete childishness. Both movies are so close, you'd call this a template; and while it doesn't achieve the same classic status, it kept that silly smile on my face for damn near the entire movie.But it's not fair to make this a strict comparison between the two. Suffice it to say, it feels appropriate that it shares the same director with "The Muppet Movie". It's got a cast that's willing to sell the material - hard - and standouts include Rene Auberjonois as an unruly priest and Joseph Bologna (seriously, with a name like that) as the tormented captain at the wheel. And then there's the actual bus, comically oversized and always a visual gag.It's a fun ride.7/10

moonspinner55 A double-decker, nuclear-powered super-bus called the Cyclops One makes its maiden voyage from New York City to Denver, but immediately there are problems: the scientist behind Cyclops One was almost killed before the bus even left the terminal, while the lead driver is under duress from a recent bus crash in which he was accused of eating the passengers...oh and, yes, there's a bomb on-board. In 1976, disaster movies hadn't yet outlived their usefulness as "dramatic entertainment", so "The Big Bus" came off as cynical (it was really just two or three years ahead of its time). There are some big laughs, mostly early on: René Auberjonois is dryly funny as a frustrated priest, Lynn Redgrave as a fashionista has a great bit dressing the passengers in her new Fall line, Ruth Gordon is a hoot as always playing a mouthy old lady (what else?) and Murphy Dunne is terrific as lounge pianist Tommy Joyce. The screenplay by Lawrence J. Cohen and Fred Freeman flirts with outrageousness without ever getting us there. The movie, filled with familiar goof-offs from television, is too middle-of-the-road to provide the kind of lunatic highs David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abraham would eventually deliver with 1980's "Airplane!" This plays more like a Mel Brooks clone, something along the lines of "Silent Movie". ** from ****

Kenneth Anderson The saying goes, dying is easy, comedy is hard. You ain't kiddin'. About 30 minutes into "The Big Bus" I was wishing for death. A spoof of disaster films that was made when disaster films were still popular, "The Big Bus" is one of those films that keep your interest because you keep searching the actor's faces to see if they betray any trace of the desperation that must come from trying to make the most of terrible material. When a film is as boring as this, you have a lot of time for random thoughts: I watched a puffy-looking Stockard Channing (resembling 70's era Elizabeth Taylor) and wondered how she managed the magic act of salvaging her career after this; Sally Kellerman performs as if she's in a funnier film than the one I'm watching; I wonder why all of Lynn Redgrave's scenes fall so flat; I speculate over what sort of nepotism or deal with the devil resulted in the casting of the hammy and thuddingly unfunny Stuart Margolin; I think about the studio contract system and the feckless charm of John Beck; I try to count how many films in which Ruth Gordon did the same "foul-mouthed granny" bit ... anything to keep me from paying attention to how ugly this film looks (It was so flatly lit, I thought it was a Universal film) and how badly I wanted it to end. Comedy is so subjective and personal, I totally understand that some people may find it hilarious. I'm just in the camp that didn't laugh even once. View at your own risk - it may become your favorite film, or, like me, you may want to scratch your eyes out at the 30 minute point.

tom-darwin Is a society that laughs so hard at its own fads humble, narcissistic, or both? This forgotten spoof, four years before "Airplane!," appeared after years of "Airport" and Irwin Allen films, just as disaster movies were being replaced by the Spielberg shockers that started with "Jaws" and led to "Jurassic Park" (X-treme Discovery Channel, but that's another story). Cylops, a nuclear-powered, double-decker, articulated luxury bus (an impressive set of props & sets) finishes development despite sabotage attacks that cripple the specially trained drivers. Venerable driver Dan Torrance (Bologna) is hired as a replacement even though he's in disgrace after a disastrous run in which he was accused of eating his passengers while stranded! The bus's designer, Kitty (Channing) is his former love whom he dumped after cheating on her repeatedly. The film is a mostly unsubtle jab at all-star disaster movies in which subplots are resolved by the characters being forced to find common ground to survive the burning building, burning airship, overturned liner, earthquake, et. al. Scruffy engineer Scotty (Beatty) and a fugitive housewife (Gordon) are openly based on George Kennedy's & Helen Hayes' characters in "Airport," respectively. There are also a failed priest (Auberjonois, spoofing his "MASH" role), an oversexed, vengeful fashion maven (Redgrave), a spoiled, bickering couple celebrating their divorce (Mulligan & Kellerman) and a vet disgraced for experimenting with lapine birth control (Dishy). Shull, as a terminally ill man, parodies Lionel Barrymore in "Grand Hotel," reminding us of how uncomfortably similar that old classic is to "The Towering Inferno." The bus's nemesis is a powerful family (Ferrer & Margolin) who create disasters to destroy technical innovation & are apparently responsible for most disasters, real or fictional, filmed since the 1950s, including the "Titanic." The script is wildly erratic, ranging from comic genius to contrived stupidity. The latter include the opening press conference & the encounter with the pickup truck. But the former include most of the scenes involving the bus, including the one in which Dan deals with a bomb, which was redone dramatically in "Speed" nearly 20 years later. Cyclops has a bowling alley, swimming pool & dining room, all hilariously reduced to dollhouse-size, as well as self-changing tires, an Automatic Washing Mechanism (AWM) and soda-pumping & luggage-ejection features. Despite its contrivances, the story holds together amazingly & even provides real suspense up to the very end. Bologna is a bit hammy as the troubled Bus Captain, but Channing is brilliant, both believable & funny, as the nuclear scientist/love interest. The scene in which she drives while sitting on the lap of unconscious co-driver Shoulders (Beck) is almost enough in itself to make the whole film worthwhile. But Murphy Dunne nearly steals the show as the most offensive lounge piano player ever ("Thank yooou!"). Despite the in-your-face satire, look for some very subtle comic touches like the jab at TV news & the pictures in Iron Man's hall.