Ron Howard directed this tame, harmless, innocuous, and forgettable TV movie shortly after making Grand Theft Auto for Roger Corman. Howard’s co-star from American Graffiti, Charles Martin Smith, Terry the Toad himself, stars as a George, a high school senior who doesn’t make the football team. He then sets out to join the town’s hottest rock n’ roll band, “Rapid Fire”, who reject and humiliate him. Undeterred, George starts his own band, Cotton Candy, and almost immediately falls in love with his drummer (Leslie King, of Gas Pump Girls and Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend fame). Naturally, their bliss is shaken when she gets accepted into MIT, and it threatens to tear their relationship, and the band, apart.
Cotton Candy pretty much plays like an overlong After School Special. Either that, or an unsold pilot. There are moments that WANT to be semi-risqué (there’s a strip poker scene that is predictably cut short), but you have a feeling that Opie didn’t want to tarnish his squeaky-clean image, so it just winds up being watered-down. (There are even silly variations on curse words like “flush you!” that just seem forced.)
Smith (who was also in The Buddy Holly Story, which came out the same year) is pretty good. Howard’s brother, Clint (who co-wrote the screenplay with Ron) is goofy as usual as the band’s manager, Corky. It was a family affair all around as Howard’s dad Rance also appears in a small role (as well as produced). King has a likeable presence, and it’s a shame she didn’t make more movies because she really holds her own here.
Cotton Candy (the band) are kind of square. Their songs are forgettable, and Howard’s staging of their performances is lackluster. Fortunately, when Rapid Fire takes the stage, the film fitfully comes alive during their hilariously bad numbers. The sequence where they perform the whitest version of “I Shot the Sheriff” you have ever seen, is a ripe slice of must-see shitty ‘70s Made for TV nonsense. The rest of the movie, not so much.
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