D.C. Cab (1983) and the Idea of Rag-Tag Teams Coming Together

Underdog stories make for great entertainment as the little guy overcomes the bigger, meaner opponent to end up on top.  Or, at least, as close to the top as possible.  Many times, underdog stories are used for sports movies.  A ragtag team is assembled and must come together as a whole in order to overcome any of the obstacles that they’re going to face.  It builds the tension as audiences don’t know whether the players will learn to work together in time for the big game.

There are other instances where the underdog story will happen with a team of ragtag members, but instead of a sport, it is for some other purpose.  One instance was in 1983’s D.C. Cab.  Albert Hockenberry (Adam Baldwin) was a southerner who moved to Washington D.C. to get into the taxi business.  He hooked up with Harold (Max Gail) and his rag-tag crew of cab drivers.  The drivers learned how to work together and become a team so that they could stand up to the competing cab companies, a thief, and some kidnappers.

When D.C. Cab is laid out, it bears resemblance to other underdog stories.  There were many story beats that it shared with other underdog stories.  One movie that it resembled in the plot structure was The Mighty Ducks.  There were some major deviations.  Nobody in The Mighty Ducks was the victim of a kidnapping.  Yet there were a whole bunch of similarities between the two films.  There will be some spoilers ahead as the plots of the two movies are compared.

The perfect place to begin a comparison between D.C. Cab and The Mighty Ducks would be to discuss the introductions of the outside characters.  The outside character of each movie was someone who came from outside the rag-tag team and became the catalyst for how they would eventually end up working together.  Of course, this bonding didn’t come without its problems, but that will be covered later.  For now, the focus is on Albert Hockenberry and Gordon Bombay.

Albert Hockenberry was the son of a Vietnam soldier, who travelled to Washington to get a job as a cab driver, under the supervision of Harold, a war buddy of his dad’s.  When he first joined up, not everybody trusted him.  This was particularly true of Tyrone (Charlie Barnett) who thought that Albert was just another racist white man from the South.  Albert would need to prove himself to the other people in the cab company if he wanted to be taken seriously.

Gordon Bombay was also an outsider who needed to prove himself so that his team would trust him.  He was a lawyer sentenced to community service that involved coaching the District-5 peewee hockey team in Minneapolis and Saint Paul.  As a child, he had been a part of the rival Hawks team, which meant that the District-5 team thought he was the enemy.  He had to prove himself to the team he was coaching in order for them to trust him and take his advice on how to become a better hockey team.

Going off of the Hawks, both movies featured a rival team that the main characters felt they weren’t good enough to compete with.  That wouldn’t stop them from speaking out against the bullies that were keeping them down.  The rag-tag group wouldn’t let some other team bring them down just because the other team was, by all accounts, better at what the rag-tag group was trying to do.  There were reasons for that, but first the rivals must be discussed.

D.C. Cab featured a few different taxi cab companies.  The two most important were the titular D.C. Cab company that featured all of the fun lunatics that the audience followed throughout the movie.  The other cab company was Emerald Cab, the “we’re better than you” rivals who would go out of their way to belittle the team from D.C. Cab.  They were the ones who could pay off the people who wanted to bother the cab drivers.  They had the fancy looking cabs and jackets.  They had everything that D.C. Cab needed to be successful, and they were always rubbing it in the faces of the people working for D.C. Cab.

The Mighty Ducks had a similar situation, where the Hawks were the bullies who were tormenting them all the time.  The Hawks came from a part of town where the families were richer, and that gave the kids on the team a superiority complex.  They would torment them in the streets and on the ice.  The main thing was that, since they were from the richer part of town, they had more money to buy better equipment.  Much like the Emerald Cab company of D.C. Cab, all of their equipment looked better and worked better.  They had a monetary advantage.

Another thing that D.C. Cab and The Mighty Ducks both had when it came to their rag-tag team of main characters was a monetary influx that would help them overcome their rivals.  It wouldn’t be the only thing that they needed to do better, but it would be a big help.  Neither team had good funds to back them up when they needed equipment.  However, they ended up getting some money and it would set them up nicely for a comeback that would make them into the successful team that the audience wanted to see them become.

D.C. Cab faked out the audience with the added money by having a violin get lost in one of the taxis in Washington.  There was a reward for the lost violin, and Max wanted everyone to share the reward so that the company could flourish.  Instead, his wife took the reward and kept it for herself, leaving him in the process.  Luckily for D.C. Cab, Albert had some money stowed away.  With that money, the company was able to paint and remodel their cars.  They were able to get jackets and uniforms.  Most importantly, they could get airport licenses to legally pick up fare from the airports in the area.  The rag-tag team had improved their equipment and could now compete with their rivals.

The Mighty Ducks also featured the rag-tag team getting an influx of money that helped them get better equipment.  Gordon Bombay went to his boss, the guy in charge of the law firm he worked at, to get some sponsorship for the hockey team.  That allowed the team to go to a store and buy the pads, sticks, skates, helmets, and jerseys they needed to better their performance and their morale.  It also gave them a new name, the Ducks.  With that boost, they could put in better games on the ice and eventually go head to head against the Hawks again.

The money wasn’t the only thing that made the teams better though.  The other big thing was that they needed to come together as a team.  There needed to be something, some big moment that made them all start working together.  Both D.C. Cab and The Mighty Ducks had a notable scene where the whole rag-tag group of people came together in an undeniable teamwork way.

Through the first half of D.C. Cab, one of the drivers was being harassed by a thief who would wait for her to pull up to a corner, then jump into her car and take all of the money she earned.  It happened a few times before the thief jumped into a car that Albert was in.  Albert sped back to the headquarters with the thief in the car, where everyone came together to stop the thief from thieving anymore.  It was the first time that everyone had bonded as a single unit team, and Max was quick to point it out.  When he had the violin money, he used that moment as an example of why they should stick together.  Then, when Albert was kidnapped, they worked together to save him.  They were a team.

The difference in The Mighty Ducks was that their coming together scene was a little later in the story.  It happened after the money.  The children were mad at Gordon Bombay and each other and were acting out in school.  When the teacher came into the room and demanded to know why they were acting out and fighting, the entire team, who just happened to be in the same science class, started quacking.  They were together in doing their team chant in defiance of their teacher.  It was the moment where they all came together to become a unified force.  That would power them through to the end of the movie, and to victory in their big game.

Movies are made on the regular about rag-tag teams coming together to make for a nearly unstoppable force.  In the superhero world, there was recently Deadpool 2, and before that, there was Guardians of the Galaxy.  In the sports world, the Goon movies see Seann William Scott’s enforcer character bringing together a team of kooky hockey players.  In comedies that don’t involve sports, there are movies like The Internship that play with the rag-tag team formula.  It’s a concept that can move from genre to genre, each with an equal chance of success.

D.C. Cab and The Mighty Ducks were two examples of this rag-tag team concept that succeeded in making the underdogs an entertaining group to watch succeed.  Both movies have issues within them, but they made the underdog characters fun to watch.  D.C. Cab, in particular, took the formula and put it into an unexpected place, only for it to work pretty well.  There’s a lot to like about D.C. Cab, and most of that comes down to the likeable team of characters.

Now let’s get to some notes before we get out of here:

• D.C. Cab was directed by Joel Schumacher, who also directed Batman & Robin (week 138).
• Gary Busey returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies for the third time with D.C. Cab.  He was also in The Gingerdead Man (week 69) and Drop Zone (week 132).
• Another third-timer this week was Paul Rodriguez, who had previously shown up in Beverly Hills Chihuahua (week 70) and Sandy Wexler (week 231).
• D.C. Cab was the second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance for Mr. T.  He had a role in Freaked (week 131).
• Anne De Salvo popped into D.C. Cab for a bit.  She was in a movie called Perfect (week 195).
• Finally, Ron Canada was in D.C. Cab, and was recently featured in Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD (week 284).
• Have you seen D.C. Cab?  What did you think of it?  What do you think of movies where there are rag-tag teams that must work together?  Do you like underdogs? Share your thoughts in the comments.
• The comments can also be used to suggest movies for future Sunday “Bad” Movies installments.  If there’s a movie that you think should be covered through this blog, let me know on Twitter or in the comments section.
• Bad movies are a big part of my Snapchat.  I’ll share clips of them with people through my story or directly.  If that sounds fun, add me (jurassicgriffin).
• As I tend to often do, I’ll be diving into horror for next week’s Sunday “Bad” Movies post.  Since Friday will be the 13^th of July, it only seemed fitting to go with another Friday the 13^th movie.  This time, it will be the eighth entry, Jason Takes Manhattan.  How much time does he spend in the Big Apple?  You’ll know next week.  See you then.