[1][3][4][5][6] In a small Florida tourist town named Ticlaw, the mayor/preacher Kirby T. Calo (William Devane) also operates a hotel and tiny wildlife safari park.

When the state highway commission builds a freeway adjacent to the town, Calo slips an official $10,000 to assure an off-ramp.

Meanwhile, tourists from various parts of the United States, shown in a series of concurrent, ongoing vignettes, are heading to Florida and will all end up in Ticlaw, one way or another.

They include a pair of bank robbers from New York (George Dzundza, Joe Grifasi) who pick up a cocaine-dealing hitchhiker (Daniel Stern); a Chicago copy machine repairman and aspiring children's book author (Beau Bridges), who picks up a waitress (Beverly D'Angelo), who is carrying her deceased mother's ashes to Florida; a dentist and his dysfunctional family (Howard Hesseman, Teri Garr, Peter Billingsley and Jenn Thompson), vacationing cross-country in their RV; an elderly woman (Jessica Tandy) with a drinking problem and her loving husband (Hume Cronyn), who are heading to Florida to retire; two nuns (mother superior Geraldine Page, novice nun Deborah Rush); and a wannabe country songwriter (Paul Jabara) hauling a playful rhino and other wild animals to Ticlaw.

The film was the idea of British producer Don Boyd, based on his imagination of American life rather than knowledge.

"My father worked for the British-American Tobacco Company and was assigned to New York for six months, but I didn't remember a thing about it."

Boyd returned to London, showed the script to Barry Spikings of EMI films who agreed to finance.

"[11] The director added, "If we had really wanted to make it totally surefire commercial, we would have hired six gag writers and I wouldn't have directed it.

"[12] Schlesinger called it "the most complicated project I've ever attempted" adding that the film was "a comedy about characters, so it needs extremely fine care and acting.

"[8] The budget increased to $23 million due to a combination of factors: the Florida weather, care for the Vietnamese orphans, and various animals in the film.

Dynamite crews blew up a wooden bridge built to look like the southbound lane overpass at I-75 and Palmer Road before the Tampa-to-Miami leg of the highway was completed in 1981.

[19] Variety wrote: "The overriding question about EMI's Honky Tonk Freeway is why anyone should want to spend over $25m.

Some have argued that the film can be viewed as a satire on the American way of life, and this contributed to its unfavorable critical reception at the time.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times remarked that the film was "so uneven that it incorporates both a strain of bawdy humor (which is markedly unfunny) and some touches reminiscent of late 1950s to early 60s Disney.

Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy are on hand as an advertising man and his alcoholic wife, who declares proudly that her husband invented bad breath.