Smokey and the Bandit

Following the death of Burt Reynolds a few months ago I thought I should watch his most iconic roles. So I rented Smokey and the Bandit from Netflix, but it sat on my shelf for weeks. I couldn't bring myself to watch a movie I figured I'd dislike. I watched it yesterday, and I disliked it.

I'm not much for Southern car culture. I never watched Dukes of Hazzard, and to the best of my knowledge I have never watched a NASCAR race. This film, which was amazingly popular (it was the second-highest grossing film of 1977, behind only Star Wars) was Burt Reynolds at his peak, and also at his laziest. It's basically a home movie of him and his friends having fun.

Reynolds is the Bandit, and I'm not quite sure how me makes a living, although we are told he once drove trucks. He takes a bet by a pair of Texans (Pat McCormick and Paul Williams, in a pretty funny sight gag) to bring them forty cases of Coors to them in Georgia in 28 hours (at the time, Coors was not sold east of the Mississippi). Reynolds gets his friend, Jerry Reed, to drive the truck, while he uses a Trans Am to run interference (Trans Am sales went up 700 percent).

In Texas, Reynolds picks up a runaway bride (Sally Field), which puts a sheriff (Jackie Gleason) on his tail, since it was his son who was left at the altar. Gleason, in one of the greatest examples of overacting you'll ever see, defies jurisdictional boundaries and chases Reynolds across several states. So there's lots of wrecked cars, mocking of police, and celebrating bootlegging and general disregard of the law.

Smokey and the Bandit also cashed in on the CB craze of the time (one of the big hits of the period was C. W. McCall's "Convoy") and if there's anything that drives me insane its CB lingo.

But of course Reynolds supplies enough star power to make the film palatable. He had that something special--guys wanted to be his friend, women wanted to take him home--and that's the strength of the picture. It was directed by Reynolds' stunt man buddy Hal Needham, and the script was largely improvised. It was also when Reynolds and Field, who never looked cuter, started dating.

I've never found watching cars crash to be amusing or entertaining, at least outside of a demolition derby (they used to televise those, and they were kind of fascinating). When I watch police  cars roll into ditches I can't but wonder if someone could be injured. I realize these films are have the realism of cartoons, but I find them distasteful nonetheless.