This evening I watched Carwash for about the tenth time.  I first saw this movie at the Drive-in back in the seventies when I was some age under 10.

Back then I remember thinking that it was very funny watching a guy go through a car wash in a body cast.

This almost Disco movie has a number of similarities to its much more popular cousin Saturday Night Fever.  There’s not really all that much dancing in it and the sound track really only brings to mind the disco song Carwash as opposed to an entire master piece by the Bee Gees.

But there are many dark undertones throughout the movie.  Surviving the early seventies, Vietnam vets working in a car wash sporting a silver star, prostitution, drugs, Beverly Hills Yuppie Mom’s in Mercedes even.  Even a mad pop bottle bomber terrorizing the city.

Where’s the funny?

Now, each time I watch this movie, I do so because I expect to find something funny.  Tonight, I realized that even though two of my favorite comedians are in this movie (cameos or almost a walk on part), the movie isn’t that funny.  Its much more human than it is funny.

There are some things that slip through and are funny today.  Such as the ‘best hand job in town’ sign.

The movie is essentially the day in the life of several people that live and work in the ecosystem of a carwash (note I am the first person ever to write the words ‘ecosystem of a carwash’ and publish it.)

There is no plot for the most part, just a journey through the day.  In Saturday Night Fever there was a journey to win a dance contest and all the tension and sub plots, but Carwash is just a journey through the day.  There are character level sub plots, and even at the very end, an elder and wiser man helps a younger man (Bill Duke a very good character actor and a director/producer type) avoid making the mistakes of youth.

That’s the spiritual uplifting aspect of a movie that also features bottles of urine crashing on the street and dog shit on the car roof jokes, but it is actually pretty poignant.

Maybe back in the seventies this movie was a lot funnier with a nickle bag of pot.  That funny journey through the day capped off with something deep man . . .