Smokey and the Bandit: Silly, Simplistic Fun

Well, you learn something new every day, and yesterday, I learned that Jerry Reed's famous country song East Bound and Down was explicitly written for Hal Needham's cult classic Smokey and the Bandit, a movie I didn't make the time to watch until last night. I didn't know what I was missing. While far from a masterpiece, Smokey and the Bandit was a hoot, an uncomplicated and rowdy chronicle of a homegrown American smuggling ring as well as a movie that does a number of things really well.

I found myself drawn to the simplicity of this story. Cledus (Smokey) and Bandit, having made a bet with some truckers, need to smuggle a trailer full of beer from Georgia to Texas within 28 hours. This is as bare-bones a premise as they get, and I was charmed by the uncomplicated spirit of Smokey and the Bandit. If you've read my blog for any amount of time, you might know how much I love both simple movies and time constraints placed on their characters, and this movie has both. Cledus and Bandit make for an incredibly satisfying and endlessly comical dynamic duo, a non-stop fountain of hilariously entertaining bickering. Throw in a runaway bride with the undesirable nickname of Frog, and you have a wonderful group of distinctive characters that are incredibly fun to watch, even if their acting isn't much to write home about.

Nevertheless, Smokey and the Bandit doesn't always know how to utilize what exactly makes it unique or even good. I wish it acknowledged the time restraints it puts on itself more often, something that would make for a great "do-or-die" deadline to disaster or at least failure, but the fact that our three misadventurers are on a time crunch is rarely brought up at all in any way. It's not that the movie never acknowledges the greater goals its characters are trying to accomplish, but it doesn't tend to pay homage to its own premise enough.

Still, the movie has garnered a cult following for good reasons, one such reason being an incredibly amusing sense of humor, a tonal commitment that never competes with more serious flavors for superiority, either. Another reason for this following is the unique voices of every character in Smokey and the Bandit. Everybody in this movie is just so darn interesting, portrayed in a manner that somehow both stereotypes and near-deifies the Deep South and its culture. This movie is a relic of a time when stereotypes were a more acceptable source of humor. Still, it never seems disrespectful - only really, truly hilarious in a way only classic movies can be, not because the 1900s were inherently an era populated by better movies, but rather because they were built differently back then than now, built for a less sensitive audience.

Smokey and the Bandit is a highly likable exhibit of the habits of a far less cynical former age of Hollywood, the type of movie that wants to have fun and make sure you're having fun with it more than anything else. It may not have much of an overall arc in mind, but it more than makes up for its relative aimlessness with an unmistakable magnetism and wonderful performances all across the board. If you're looking for beautifully brainless fun, Smokey and the Bandit is it and then some.

Smokey and the Bandit - 7/10

Luke 21: 32-36