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Review: The Dukes of Hazzard

by Ryan Stewart Aug 7th 2005 // 7:00PM

Filed under: Action, Comedy

The folks who made this movie must think that Southern culture is from Mars. The Dukes of Hazzard is a woefully miscalculated attempt at rooking some red-state rubes out of their money by regurgitating the small-town hijinks of the Duke boys and their old Dodge shit-kicker. But I don't think it will work. In fact, I bet you 'Passion dollars'-to-donuts that even those who have been waiting on barbecue-scented tenterhooks for a big-screen Dukes adventure will be sending this one back to the chef.

Firstly, Jay Chandrasekhar is an awful director. His first feature, Super Troopers, is mercifully unseen by me, but I have been reliably informed that it stinks, and this latest opus is all the proof I need. If he just knew nothing about how to make a bearable genre film, that would be bad enough. But with The Dukes of Hazzard, he takes the more insufferable road of irony-overload, which is one degree away from "I could care less if this movie is good or not." This is an 'end credits gag-reel' movie that can't get there fast enough. (I'm looking forward to the first all end credits gag-reel movie.)

Secondly, the casting is off-the-charts wrong. Danny DeVito would have been a perfect choice to play Jefferson Davis "Boss" Hogg, the tater tot-sized tyrant in a toothpaste-white suit who rules over Hazzard County. I can only imagine that someone set an absurdly low budget for this film that precluded them from meeting DeVito's quote. Instead we have to suffer Burt Reynolds, who long ago disappeared down a rabbit-hole of his own Burt-X-istenZ, and can barely be troubled to open his eyes for most of this film. He doesn't want to be there and I don't want him to be there.

M.C. Gainey is lost at sea as Rosco, the town sheriff and Hogg partisan who ended up most episodes of the show with mud caked all over his face and his tires flat. Gainey is actually a pretty good actor, and good at playing a bad guy, but he seems twisted into a knot over what to do with his mess of a part here. And why does he wear giant shoulder-pads for most of the film? So many questions. Willie Nelson is also unbearable in the film as Uncle Jesse. Is Willie some kind of poster-boy for the pot-smoking lobby? (My subscription to High Times just ran out.) Most of his jokes in this film have him giddily exiting a small, smoke-filled room. Tee-hee. Maybe they could have given Smokey McGee a few acting lessons.

Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville are mostly serviceable as a couple of good old sum' bitches, even though the accents drift in and out of focus. You can't exactly blame them - Hazzard County, Georgia is a town that exists in a weird alternative timeline where the South has been vanquished and replaced by a harmless brand of Santa Monica dude-ism. There's some vague idea of a plot about moonshining, which I can't imagine is a very profitable industry, since Prohibition ended some 80 years ago. Most of the dialogue in the film consists of tinsel-strength one-liners that creak, crackle and fall like the lonely tree in the forest.

The only scenes that have left their chum on my otherwise freshly-scrubbed memory are the scenes that stand out for badness. Of course we have to endure the coma-inducing "Confederate Flags are Politically Incorrect" scene. I actually saw someone in front of me playing with the buttons on his cell-phone during that one, and I became jealous because I didn't have one. And then there's Jay Chandrasekhar's inexplicably conspicuous cameo. And then there's the Big Race scene, which makes so little sense that I won't bother explaining. And then there's every time Jessica Simpson is on-screen.

Out on the town the other night, I heard a bar patron expound, in an eerily on-message way, about how much he was looking forward to seeing Jessica Simpson wrap on the Daisy Duke shorts. It reminded me of a recent 60 Minutes piece on covert advertising. Supposedly, big companies now send their clones into public places like bars to spread propaganda about the latest bad product. Is there any doubt that's what I witnessed? How else could anyone get so excited? Jessica Simpson wears the shorts fine, yes. I get it. But she radiates all the sexual energy of a centaur.

Most of the money and energy for this film went into the car-porn scenes, which aren't bad. I clocked at least 30 minutes of low-angle, leaf-scattering chasing, which is a lot for a movie that's only about 90 minutes. There are, thankfully, no visible CGI short-cuts going on. It looks like everyone at least got down in the dirt to put something watchable on the screen. In this day and age, we've been reduced to being thankful for that.

Although I have to wonder if it's even remotely possible for a car to take that kind of punishment in off-road conditions. Launching a car off an incline and landing it again seems like it would at least blow out your tires, if not bury your transmission in a crater. Exactly the kind of thing I should be pondering during an action movie. What else can I say? This movie doesn't rip or roar. It's neither rootin' nor tootin'. It's not a good time.

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