There is some social humour to this film which is sometimes even funny in a brain-dead kind of way. Although the most striking aspect of the satire is not that it is funny – it isn’t  – but that it offers an uncanny time capsule in on the 1970s – on jogging fads, the energy crisis, Jimmy Carter, the Middle East, est, the national debt, the start of the fads for condos and saunas. John Ritter goes through all the familiar hapless, aghast shrugs of his face in a performance so mellowed out he seems in imminent danger of fading away. Zane Buzby does her shrieking, wide-eyed animal thing – she’s awful, but even so she’s the most alive thing the film has. The central idea is played so stupefyingly one wonders what kind of mental injury it takes to fumble an opportunity for merciless satire so resoundingly. The Americathon audience’s excuse for watching was because they were bored – it takes a good deal more for a cinema audience.