Suppose you're Mark Hamill and you've gone from long-time bit-part TV actor (and the original eldest son on Eight is Enough) to one of the overnight stars of Star Wars. What's your next step while you're waiting to start the next film in George Lucas's series, then still being referred to popularly as Star Wars II?
You decide to show your range by appearing in a low-budget comedy about a high school senior obsessed with finding his stolen car. It's an early effort by director and co-writer Matthew Robbins, who would go onto better things, and it clearly aimed for the summer teen and fading drive-in audiences.
Hamill, fresh-faced though well into his twenties, plays Ken, who leads the pack of elite senior shop kids whose major project is restoring and customizing a 1973 Corvette Stingray, under the direction of avuncular auto teacher Mr. McGrath (Eugene Roche). The project completed, the kids take turns cruising the strips of Los Angeles. Their enthusiasm and the excellent shots of period LA's still-active car culture end in disaster. Someone drives off with their prize while they're getting Cokes to drink. They want to blame the idiot of the group, Kootz (Danny Bonaduce, trying to find his way post-Partridge), but some aspects of the theft don't quite make sense.
Acting on a hot and wholly implausible tip, Ken heads to Las Vegas, assisted first by some Latino Low Riders and then by a perky, eccentric young woman in a custom van named, of course, Vanessa. Played by Annie Potts in her breakout role, she's a perky self-proclaimed "prostitute trainee." They work together-- when they can stay together-- to try to find the car, which keeps popping up around Sin City.
The tone and genre meander. Mostly we have a comedy (including some passable slapstick by Hamill), but it also becomes a crime feature and drama with aspirations to be taken somewhat seriously. We see a barely-developed subplot involving Ken's mother (Jane A. Johnston), some revelations about the car's theft, and some third-act developments to Ken's character, before the film reels back to comedy.
And, of course, car chases.
Corvette Summer features some of the dumbest cops and crooks in 70s cinema. The crooks drive the stolen, highly and distinctly modified Stingray openly around Vegas, thinking a minor paint job will render it unrecognizable, and the cops, in fact, regularly fail to recognize it.
Like a bad custom job, the disparate parts never quite fit together. Hamill is merely okay in the lead. Potts, probably the best thing about the film, has to act within the confines of a problematic role that falls somewhere between Manic Pixie Dream Girl and Hooker with a Heart of Gold. The film did get her noticed, and her price would increase.
I won't give away the ending. If you want or need to see the film, you should be left to anticipate it yourself. Honestly, the mystery underlying the theft has a pretty good solution. The era fabricated far better fare, but this one isn't too bad, if your expectations aren't too high.
Hamill, who famously suggested that the film would have done better as Car Wars, would have a career that took its own twists and turns.