Coupe de Ville

Roth's low-budget comedy bottles sibling rivalry inside a vintage Cadillac on a cross-country journey, shakes it up, fuels on '60s rock, quarrels and caring, and proves to be a sweetheart of a film. Three dissimilar brothers - a bully in uniform (Stern), a dreamer (Gross) and a teenage rebel (Dempsey) - are directed by their father (Arkin) to deliver the car intact and without a scratch for their mother's birthday. The assignment proves tricky, but along the way the boys learn about co-existence and family loyalty, which was dad's idea in the first place. Nothing spectacularly original about the plot, but the playing throughout is so juicy and the writing so idiosyncratic that it feels like hot news. Fans of major chromium and the white-wall tyre will go through hell with the title vehicle.