#36: Smokey and the Bandit

Release Date: May 27th, 1977

Format: Streaming (Netflix)

Written by: James Lee Barrett, Alan Mandel, and Charles Shyer

Directed by: Hal Needham

3 Stars

I’ll keep this review short. Over intellectualizing Smokey and the Bandit seems like the wrong move.

This is a movie that knows exactly what it is. It knows its audience (straight, white, good ol’ fun-lovin’ Southerners), its star (Burt Reynolds, who coasts on a smile and a cowboy hat), and the tone it wants to achieve (rollicking, straightforward hijinks with a plot that a 5-year-old could follow). In that regard, it’s a great movie.

As a guy who grew up in the Pacific Northwest and was born after this movie was released, this plays like a foreign flick. These characters and behaviors seem strange and impossible, but not inauthentic. I saw an interview a long time ago with Billy Bob Thornton and he said that he had the chance to meet Burt Reynolds, and when he did he told him that where he comes from, people don’t think of Smokey and the Bandit as a movie, but rather as a documentary. 

There’s a line in the movie where Smokey tells Frog that when you tell somebody something, it depends on what part of the country you’re standing in as to just how dumb you are. This movie is a million miles away from me, but I get it, I think.