The Dukes of Hazzard: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

(Originally published 2005)

As far as Hollywood is concerned, it's either hell being a hillbilly or a hell of a lot of fun being a hillbilly.

The downside seems to be the bitter taste of moonshine (awful), infighting (brutal), a sheer lack of intelligence (rampant) and a lingering, uncomfortable sheen of sweat that makes one's skin appear like flypaper (gross).

The good news is that there apparently is something to be said for the obsessive caterwauling, hard drinking, fast driving, loose living and utter disregard for the law the Hollywood hillbilly enjoys.

All of this and less is explored in "The Dukes of Hazzard," Jay Chandrasekar's predictably dumb remake of the popular television series that ran on CBS from 1979 to 1985.

This celebration of stereotypes and stupidity is based on a script by John O'Brien. What it has going for it are some of the lowest expectations for a movie to hit theaters this year. To be a success, all "Hazzard" had to do was to be reasonably spirited, sexy and funny. That's all anyone could have asked of it.

But not unlike this summer's other remakes of former hit television shows, "Hazzard" doesn't understand what made its source material a success. It also doesn't understand that what worked on television can collapse when shot for a movie screen, where its flaws are magnified and the running time is a shade longer.

Compounding the problem are the times. When the television show appeared, we were a decade out from race riots of the '60s, and the idea of a show about a couple of bumbling, Confederate-loving cousins up to no good apparently had a certain rebel appeal to it, particularly since the cousins often were the butt of the joke.

For like-minded members of the viewing audience, they could laugh along with them. For those who found them offensive, they could laugh right at them.

For six years, it somehow worked.

Here it doesn't.

"The Dukes of Hazzard" is little more than an endless rumble of car chases, with the plot - if you can call it that - coming down to Boss Hogg (Burt Reynolds) working on the sly to strip-mine Hazzard County. Should he succeed, it will leave Uncle Jesse Duke (Willie Nelson) without a farm to brew his moonshine.

In between, we get Bo and Luke Duke (Seann William Scott, Johnny Knoxville) creating hillbilly havoc with the local authorities while Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke makes fleeting appearances to show off her fancy new bod.

If as much work went into the making of this movie as it did into the making of Simpson's body, we might have something here. But not the case. The movie is too timid to send itself up, too generic to stand apart, too dull to be anything more than a middling effort. There are few, if any, laughs to be had.

If the movie has any effect after its brief run in theaters, it likely will be on a drop in tourism dollars for the state of Georgia. Sure, it would be nice if the movie one day appeared in a double feature with "Deliverance" --one could examine the light and dark side of the hillbilly--but that's for the future and more than a few of us will be happy to wait.

Grade: D