Citizens Band

A high-spirited, elegantly deadpan comedy, with a mellow, light touch.

Demme is satirical but never cruel, and sweet but never syrupy: this film marked the emergence of one of the most appealing directorial personalities of the New Hollywood.

Demme has lots of fun, and, aided by a fresh, talented cast, he artfully modulates his moods from raunchy farce to somber pathos. [17 Oct 1977, p.102]

The CB dialog exemplifies the good-natured horsing around that marks those channels, at the same time the serious emergency traffic that often saves lives.

The film uses the CB craze as a metaphor for lack of human communication, and proceeds in a somewhat elliptical manner, but the alternation of moments of black humour and funny-sad incidents lends it a considerable charm.

An early and sometimes funny effort by director Demme but the hilarity of the subplots (especially the bigamous Napier) swallows the main storyline.

Citizen's Band, is so clever that its seams show. Mr. Demme's tidiest parallels and most purposeful compositions are such attention-getters that the film has a hard time turning serious for its finale, in which characters who couldn't communicate directly come to understand one another at long last.