150 Word Review: 'Smokey And The Bandit' (1977)
Breaker, breaker, 10-4
Burt Reynolds is the title Bandit, but the stars of this high-speed redneck comedy are Reynolds' black 1977 Pontiac Trans Am with gold trim and his co-star and love interest, Sally Field, one of her generation's greats whose only job is to be funny and cute as hell. Golden Age TV comedian Jackie Gleason is Smokey, a racist, loudmouth sheriff from Texas.
This is a straightforward vehicle for Reynolds' charms, a smirking, gum-chomping pork chop with a moustache. He's sexist, but forgivably so. Working folks love him. To the Bandit, All Cops Are Boneheads. Smokey and the Bandit is a good 'ol boy fable about a trucker who moonlights as a bootlegger playing interference for a truck full of stolen Coors beer bound for Georgia. Along the way, he picks up Fields, a hitchhiking runaway bride. In the 70s, CB radio was the internet of outlaws and the open road.
One of the first things I did when I moved from Atlanta to Berkeley in 1976 for gradual school was buy some Coors. I was not impressed. But I went to see the movie the following year anyway, and what I remember most is that kids in costume were lining up to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show when I left the theater. Lost worlds.
I will be forever grateful to this movie for introducing me to Jerry Reed.
♫Eastbound and Down, eighteen-wheeler rolling
We gonna do what they say can't be done♫