Sloth

Smokey And The Bandit

What’s it about?
Rakish speedster Burt Renoylds runs interference for a truckload of bootlegged Coors under the nose of oafish lawman Jackie Gleason.

Any chicks in the movie?
The perkily irritating Sally Field, who for once makes me glad I’m watching a PG movie.

Awesomeness Factor?
Charming. Bad-ass stunt driver Hal Needham made his debut as a action-movie director of some repute with Smokey And The Bandit, which repurposes the classic American road movie as a live-action Bugs Bunny / Roadrunner cartoon while tapping into the then shit-hot CB radio craze. In the Bugs role is Burt Renoylds, who back in 1977 could make your mom cream just by lookin’ at her, and who here cements his on-screen persona as one part charmer, one part outlaw and one part douchebag. Meanwhile, Jackie Gleason hams it up as the Yosemite Sam to Burt’s bootleggin’ Bugs, restricting his characterization of Sheriff Buford T. Justice to screaming every other line of dialog until Scanners-esque veins pop out of his forehead.* Much like a Bugs Bunny cartoon, it all serves as a undemanding if undeniably entertaining timewaster, dependent upon how personally bitchin’ you think it is to watch a Trans Am jump over a bridge.** Sociologically speaking, the movie assumes the audience is so anti-authoritarian that The Bandit is by definition the good guy even though he’s a fucking criminal, albeit one that specializes in victimless crimes.*** (Unless you happen to think drinking Coors constitutes a crime in and of itself. Which I do.) The movie, perhaps realizing I would be drunk, chucks up a montage of truck-drivin’ every twenty or so minutes, scored to songs sung by co-star Jerry Reed that helpfully explain what’s happening on screen. Man, I wish they did that for more movies. Maybe then I’d understand The Fountain.

Mitigated By?
Surely the technology must exist to digitally replace Burt Renoylds with Norm Macdonald’s imitation of Burt Renoylds, which would make this the greatest movie ever made. 

* At one point, Gleason also manages to use “poontang” as a verb, which makes me wonder if David Mamet did a quick polish.

** Answer: Totally.

*** If you made this movie today, The Bandit would have to have been forced into illegal behaviour in order to raise money for his dying blind cancer-riddled grandmother or some such shit. Score one for the Me Decade.