This is a story about an unemployed coalmine-worker, Adam (Daniel O'Shea - Hamburger Hill, Streets of Gold), who randomly meets a beautiful model, Terry (Jennifer Runyon - Ghostbusters, Carnosaur), and falls in love with her, after they share a spontaneous photo-shoot moment together. Unfortunately she doesn't feel the same way, and is very bad at rejecting him - although she kind of half-heartedly tries. Adam finds out that Terry is working for a sleazy producer, Freddie Fletcher (Jack Kehoe - Serpico, The Sting), whom Adam is afraid will try to groom her into making adult pictures. So of course Adam decides to try and kidnap Terry and take her to Hollywood, so she can become a star!
They briefly pass the original "Spruce Goose" (the big plane built by Howard Hughes in the 1940s) near the ending of the movie, and you can sort of guess the meaning of the metaphor from the title, as it was meant for big things, but only briefly flew (for about 1 mile), before landing - and never taking off again.
The two leads are good together, and the supporting cast feature a slew of familiar character actors, like Karen Black (Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby), as Terry's obsessive mother, Dennis Christopher (Breaking Away, Django Unchained) as Adam's strange friend, and legendary movie-director George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Creepshow) playing *surprise-surprise* a movie-director with the subtle name "Gromero", looking for a female actress for his next feature film. Betsy Blair (Marty, Betrayed) also has a smaller part, but other than these cameos, the main plot evolves around the two lovers, who will soon be stuck in a "Stockholm-Syndrome" type of romance.
As this is a quite obscure film, I will most likely keep my VHS-copy (just for the sake of preservering it until a proper wide release comes along), but otherwise it would have gone in the bin. A fine one-time view, but really doesn't have much going for it, except the chemestry (or lack thereof) between the two leads. But this seems also like a relatively common theme in the director Lech Majewski's movies, like "The Mill and the Cross", which was also beautifully filmed, but felt utterly pointless. Still a good way to spend 1½ hours - but only once.
