If anything is funnier than a fish-out-of-water comedy, it would have to be a car that runs on turnips. Driving Me Crazy combines both phenomena with gags about the fall of the Iron Curtain, each as timeless as a bootleg Jamaican Simpsons T-shirt. In his only American starring vehicle to date, German talk-show host Thomas Gottschalk stars as a brilliant inventor whose lifelong dream of constructing a device that will allow him to leave East Germany is made irrelevant by communism's collapse. Sensing that there might still be a market for his most recent invention—a "wegtable"-powered jalopy capable of traveling more than 200 miles per hour to the unexplained musical accompaniment of Mozart's "Requiem"—and encouraged by a greedy American real-estate investor eager to grab his land, Gottschalk sets off for a car show in the automobile capital of the world: Los Angeles. "America is still the place where hard work and good ideas still bring you right to the top," Gottschalk informs a doubtful companion. But his faith in the American Way is put to the test when he encounters prohibitive entrance fees and a condescending hotel clerk played by Milton Berle, then loses his invention to scheming James Tolkan. But just as he seems likely to despair, a new friend enters the scene: reformed car thief Billy Dee Williams, who guides Gottschalk through the seamy, B-list-celebrity-rich world of L.A. car thievery. A little help from a mohawked Richard Moll puts Williams and Gottschalk on the scent of unscrupulous car manufacturer Dom DeLuise. As they move closer to their nemesis, Gottschalk begins to grow closer to Americanized Old-Country villager Michelle Johnson, who confounds him with video games featuring "super brothers from Italy" and stair-stepping machines. "You Americans are crazy. You spent money to invent escalators so you don't have to climb stairs. Then you get fat. So you spent another money to invent this machine to get rid of the fat," Gottschalk observes, in a screed that would no doubt send Yakov Smirnoff into paroxysms of jealousy. Soon, the shenanigans reach their climax at a car auction that ends in comical gunplay. DeLuise gets his just desserts, Williams finally turns his life around, and, as the sun sets over the L.A. horizon, Gottschalk kisses Johnson, assured of his future career as the Iacocca of tuber-based economy vehicles and the Yahoo Serious of Germany.
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