Car Theft (1956) Online

Car Theft (1956)

** (out of 4)

Three boys are playing in what appears to be a park when they decide to do something a tad bit more adventurous. Two of the boys see a girl leave her keys inside a Pontiac convertible so they take it for a spin. Soon the cops are called and a chase ensues but things are going to get much worse. This educational film is actually rather busy because it tries to teach two different lessons. The first is that it's never wise to leave your keys in your car. The second is that if you find keys in a car it's best not to take it. This is a fairly predictable and boring short that really doesn't have too much going for it up until the very end. The start of the film just drags along as these three boys are playing around and for the life of me I can't figure out what they were doing. Things really don't pick up even when the narration tries to tell us that we should be paying attention. None of the moral lessons are all that interesting but thankfully things do pick up in the final few minutes when we start the chase and of course you know something tragic is going to happen. I was shocked to see how well directed this sequence was as it actually contains some good drama and a rather emotional ending. At 14-minutes the film is just way too long but it's worth sitting through for the ending.