The one thing that struck me while watching this was; what in Gods name is going on?
Eric Roberts spots this random woman on the street that he's seen a few times and he suddenly decides to pluck up enough courage to approach her and dazzle her with his non existent charm. When that fails he then tries to buy her affection with a cheap bracelet and a bright yellow Walkman from a street vendor.
When that fails she inexplicably collapses on the street. All this is being watched by some guy in a car who makes a phone call resulting in an ambulance from the 1960s coming from nowhere and taking her away. Eric Roberts only manages to catch the woman's first name and the hospital she's being taken to, however when he goes to pay her a visit, no one's ever heard of her and no one matches her description. It's the same story from all the nearby hospitals.
He then decides to go to the police. As Eric works as an artist for Marvel Comics he decides to take his own sketch of the woman to the police in the hope of identifying her. James Earl Jones plays a police lieutenant who is more than a little disinterested in wanting to know anything about it and generally seems angry about everything. When he decides to draw the outdated ambulance that took her, lieutenant Jones is even less impressed and orders him out.
It turns out that the woman who collapsed is a diabetic. Her room mate who briefly teams up with Eric Roberts trying to track her down is also a diabetic. She tries to call home to see if her room mate has turned up and gets a recorded message to come alone to a city horse stable for the Hansom cabs. She then gets captured and taken away in the same ambulance. For some reason there appears to be some kind of illegal experimentation going on involving diabetics and some radical new treatment for the disease which even if it's somehow successful, will still result in the imprisoned patient being sold and killed and while watching this I couldn't work out why or what the ultimate goal was in all these captured diabetics.
After some bumbling vaudeville like police work, the ambulance is tracked down to an invitation only nightclub where a rather pathetic shoot-out occurs. It would seem that with 20 or so cops all shooting at an ambulance, not one of them bothers to aim at the tyres. The captured patients are located in a mock hospital on the floors above the nightclub. And even though he's not a police officer, and was actually even considered a suspect, Eric Roberts tags along and finds his missing love interest who reveals to him that she has a boyfriend. If only she said that in the first place, but for me it opened up a big plot hole; why wasn't this alleged boyfriend ever looking for her? Where's he been in all this and why isn't he a suspect?
So despite all Eric's been through he doesn't get the girl. He immediately turns his attention to the female constable who's been assisting with the investigation and who was the obvious backup or optional love interest.
After a last ditch run in with the crazed head doctor who got away in the ambulance because movie police can't shoot straight, it ends up as a fireball at the bottom of a building site, Eric and his new lover find themselves together in the back of an actual ambulance and the rest of their lives writes itself.
I just never got this movie at all. Nothing in this made any real sense to me and while some reviews are commending the black comedy, I simply didn't see it. This was far too stupid to be funny in any sense and what story there was seemed all over the place. The whole business of capturing diabetics for radical experiments was never fully explored. The idea of using an ambulance that went out of service 30 or 40 years ago and unbelievably going unnoticed by everybody is one of the most ridiculous ideas ever put to film. It's tantamount to using a steam locomotive for the same thing, eventually people are going to notice and begin to ask questions. For me, the best thing in this was Stan Lee, co-creator of some of the best Marvel comic heroes of all time, and even he was visibly unimpressed with the lameness of Eric Roberts. So if you love watching movies with no sense of purpose then I guess you'll go orgasmic over The Ambulance.
Eric Roberts spots this random woman on the street that he's seen a few times and he suddenly decides to pluck up enough courage to approach her and dazzle her with his non existent charm. When that fails he then tries to buy her affection with a cheap bracelet and a bright yellow Walkman from a street vendor.
When that fails she inexplicably collapses on the street. All this is being watched by some guy in a car who makes a phone call resulting in an ambulance from the 1960s coming from nowhere and taking her away. Eric Roberts only manages to catch the woman's first name and the hospital she's being taken to, however when he goes to pay her a visit, no one's ever heard of her and no one matches her description. It's the same story from all the nearby hospitals.
He then decides to go to the police. As Eric works as an artist for Marvel Comics he decides to take his own sketch of the woman to the police in the hope of identifying her. James Earl Jones plays a police lieutenant who is more than a little disinterested in wanting to know anything about it and generally seems angry about everything. When he decides to draw the outdated ambulance that took her, lieutenant Jones is even less impressed and orders him out.
It turns out that the woman who collapsed is a diabetic. Her room mate who briefly teams up with Eric Roberts trying to track her down is also a diabetic. She tries to call home to see if her room mate has turned up and gets a recorded message to come alone to a city horse stable for the Hansom cabs. She then gets captured and taken away in the same ambulance. For some reason there appears to be some kind of illegal experimentation going on involving diabetics and some radical new treatment for the disease which even if it's somehow successful, will still result in the imprisoned patient being sold and killed and while watching this I couldn't work out why or what the ultimate goal was in all these captured diabetics.
After some bumbling vaudeville like police work, the ambulance is tracked down to an invitation only nightclub where a rather pathetic shoot-out occurs. It would seem that with 20 or so cops all shooting at an ambulance, not one of them bothers to aim at the tyres. The captured patients are located in a mock hospital on the floors above the nightclub. And even though he's not a police officer, and was actually even considered a suspect, Eric Roberts tags along and finds his missing love interest who reveals to him that she has a boyfriend. If only she said that in the first place, but for me it opened up a big plot hole; why wasn't this alleged boyfriend ever looking for her? Where's he been in all this and why isn't he a suspect?
So despite all Eric's been through he doesn't get the girl. He immediately turns his attention to the female constable who's been assisting with the investigation and who was the obvious backup or optional love interest.
After a last ditch run in with the crazed head doctor who got away in the ambulance because movie police can't shoot straight, it ends up as a fireball at the bottom of a building site, Eric and his new lover find themselves together in the back of an actual ambulance and the rest of their lives writes itself.
I just never got this movie at all. Nothing in this made any real sense to me and while some reviews are commending the black comedy, I simply didn't see it. This was far too stupid to be funny in any sense and what story there was seemed all over the place. The whole business of capturing diabetics for radical experiments was never fully explored. The idea of using an ambulance that went out of service 30 or 40 years ago and unbelievably going unnoticed by everybody is one of the most ridiculous ideas ever put to film. It's tantamount to using a steam locomotive for the same thing, eventually people are going to notice and begin to ask questions. For me, the best thing in this was Stan Lee, co-creator of some of the best Marvel comic heroes of all time, and even he was visibly unimpressed with the lameness of Eric Roberts. So if you love watching movies with no sense of purpose then I guess you'll go orgasmic over The Ambulance.