Southern, Man
Hazzard County gets a 21st-century makeover, like it or not.
BY GREGORY WEINKAUF
To celebrate the development, production and release of a Major Motion Picture based on the television series The
Dukes of Hazzard, this review shall include numerous paragraphs with thoughts in them.
After the screening, I was sitting in a restaurant, languidly rolling around my mouth some Pellegrino from a modestly
good year, and contemplating this movie which is not coincidentally also called The Dukes of Hazzard. My body was
struggling to digest the toxic high fructose corn syrup in the complimentary soft drink as well as the lethal trans fats in
the complimentary popcorn, and meanwhile, whilst awaiting my far less dangerous soup, my mind was trying to digest
the Dukes press notes. Suddenly (this really happened) I looked up from my evening’s reading to regard looming before
my eyes a large volume containing the complete works of William Shakespeare, which was being cuddled by a restaurant
patron loitering beside my table. The mocking presence of that book hurt nearly as much as the new Duke-boys’ mutual
(and truly weird and entirely out-of-character) punishment-ritual of viciously bashing each other upside the head with the
Atlanta telephone book, which is, as the movie would have it, approximately of the same thickness as all concerned. I
glanced uncomfortably between this person’s light reading and my own, and then relaxed and chuckled at my fate,
realizing that even in Shakespeare’s comedies it is rare to find self-promoting lines as hilarious as the one credited to the
vaguely human-looking creature called Jessica Simpson, who shamelessly refers to herself and country supercracker
Willie Nelson as “musical soulmates.”
Upon gleefully noting this modest and unassuming parallel, a large-ish geyser of Pellegrino and the majority of my lime
issued forth from my nose (this part did not really happen).
You know, while I was tempted with this piece (this written piece, you soundrel!) to go with the headline suggested by
my dear friend James, an Accidental Texan who offered up “Occupational Hazzard” (nice one, fellow!), even the best of
us have to pay our dues once in a while. This year I have steered well clear of The Amityville Horror Again-Again-
Again-Again, House of Waxing Pointless, Besmirched, Die Hard 4: Die Hostage, The Ring Two or Three or Four or
Whatever Already, Even Darker Water, (P)layer Cak (sic), Lindsay Lohan’s Dad: Fully Loaded, Guess Who (Cares --
Not Me!), The Badder News Bears, The Longestest Yard, and The Fourth or Fifth Installment in The Pink Panther Series
Without That Dead Funny Guy In It (the last being quite unceremoniously yanked from distribution), and thus I now feel
like I have to make one of two moral choices: 1. Sit around waiting to review Kevin Smith’s as-yet unmade but already
weary-sounding Fletch movie (you sillies -- just release the brilliant original on DVD again so normal people can afford
it!); or 2. Sit up straight and tall and review The Dukes of Hazzard like a real man.
Okay, so here’s the skinny on the Dukes scenario, which by this point has probably saturated to reach even oblivious
folks like the endangered Yanomamo tribes of the Amazon basin or Peter Travers. In the middle of a strange, foreign land
called American Television, Circa 1979-1985, there lay a peculiar (and apparently stateless) little constituency called
Hazzard County, U.S.A., wherein The Same Plot was reenacted week after blessed week. The Same Plot was this: Two
impossibly pleasant and modelesque “Good Ol’ Boys” named Bo and Luke Duke (who both went on to respectable
singing careers; I even saw Luke as Sweeney Todd once, and he was pretty good) zoomed their 1969 Dodge Charger
(named “The General Lee” after that guy whose team lost, case closed) through crazy rural stunts in order to evade extra-
idiotic law-enforcement agents en route to rescuing their Uncle Jesse’s alcohol farm from the clutches of local kingpin
Boss Hogg, who was essentially a large lump of bacon grease in a pristine white suit and Stetson; plus, every few
minutes, the Duke boys’ buxom cousin Daisy would appear and “help out” by sporting revealing bucolic attire. In
between these segments, truly ghastly companies would push their irritating products on the viewers, whose brains were
transforming into overcooked grits and were thus open to suggestion.
I know because I was there, friends -- even though I always become physically ill at the sound of “country” music
(exactly which country do they mean, Crackerland?) and I don’t particularly like internal-combustion cars or people who
scream “YEE-HAWWWW!” either. Perhaps I -- like many -- was paying attention for some unspoken reason, later given
voice by talented North Carolinan author Lawrence Naumoff in his novel, The Night of the Weeping Women, wherein the
narrator posits that if he were Bo and/or Luke Duke, he’d be getting very busy with Daisy in the back seat of the General
Lee, “cousins or no cousins.” Amen, and pass the pie?
Actually, I have two Personal Theories about The Dukes of Hazzard. One has to do with the original show functioning as
a sort of routine weekly inoculation, much in the way that people view horror movies or cop shows to help them to
process their societal fears; in this case, the fear in question was of Rednecks. The Dukes and their country kin were
such darned nice people existing in a totally fake sweetie-pie fantasyland of small-town America -- where the most
hateful crime was pretty much larceny, brought to justice in sixty tidy minutes -- that they could almost wander into
Mayberry or Cicely, Alaska without being asked to leave due to the obvious lingering taint of a couple of centuries of
arsons, murders, rapes and lynchings. Heck, Star Trek was more socially demanding and reality-based than The Dukes of
Hazzard, which, along with the emotional fortification of observing potentially scary people through the protective shield
of the boob tube, also likely contributed to the latter’s pabulum-like popularity.
The other Personal Theory is that The Entertainment Industry functions in accordance with a foundational edict which
is, more or less, this: “Keep the Americans from thinking too much so they will consume more.” Obviously, this is not
the only industry to prosper from this ploy, but it is fairly clearly the main reason for the existence of the The Dukes of
Hazzard movie, when there are perfectly good copies of David Byrne's twenty-year-old weird country movie True
Stories floating about for cheap.
Since many lesser critics are actually tremendously lonely people who rely upon their outlet to foist creepy personal
issues, insipid family references and whatever other crap upon unsuspecting readers, I’m going to take this opportunity
to tread the cheap road here, too, briefly -- in the interest of full disclosure, of course. When I was a lad, The Dukes of
Hazzard aired on Friday nights, and, aside from The Incredible Hulk running concurrently for a while, there wasn’t
much else for me to do on Friday nights. When I did occasionally have the opportunity to attend those largely terrible
Friday night school dances, I rather hoped to dance with an adorable girl upon whom I had suffered a crush for several
years, whose surname was Gerber -- but she could probably smell the advancing agony of the Writer upon me, and
besides, she rarely showed up at functions for the commoners. Thus, this sweethearts’ dance sadly never happened,
and, judging from how she responded to me (meaning, she didn’t) when we coincidentally boarded the same flight a few
years ago, I’m guessing that her choice (which has achieved symbolic resonance) to leave me in the company of
mediocre media was a firm one. She’s probably married to a yoga instructor or a woman or both by now, and probably
has a tattoo of her cat or her cell-phone on her butt, or so I’d like to think. In any case, the extremely obtuse point is that
the producer of the The Dukes of Hazzard movie is also called Gerber -- and I’d like for him to know, up front, that any
and all opinions expressed here, while of an extremely personal nature, have nothing at all to do with my dismay over one
of his distant relatives leaving me to a life of reviewing movies like this one without so much as the comfort of an
appealing and consistent plus-one.
Whee.
Hey, speaking of Cicely, Alaska, yes, that is indeed Barry “Maurice Minnifield” Corbin you’ll see, uncredited, at the
beginning of this Dukes movie. Even with his shotgun-crazy, slut-daughter-protectin’ antics, he’s a welcome warm-up to
a dubious enterprise. At first, Bo (Seann William Scott, doing his thing again) and Luke (Johnny Knoxville, okay here but
much funnier in the weird-out road-trip adventure Grand Theft Parsons) are too busy making sure that the audience
hears their character-identifying names spoken aloud, so Corbin helpfully chews up the scenery (and even plays
accomplice to the assassination of a tree) to acclimate both the old-school fans and the relatively non-brain-damaged to
the zaniness of Hazzard County. Unfortunately, he then vanishes, and nobody else can match his example (unlike in the
TV series, the actors here seem very confused as to whether they are playing cartoony caricatures or human beings),
which then forces the reviewer to make a choice: To judge the movie against its source material -- or to appraise it by its
own merits (or lack thereof).
While admittedly I’m no neophyte to this franchise, I’m going to go with the latter -- except to make one exhaustingly
lengthy point. This movie is directed by a ruthless Klingon warlord named Chandrasek’HAR! (pronounced with a wicked
grunt on the last syllable), and I have blithely avoided his previous comedies (Super Troopers; Club Dread) because,
frankly, my radar is exceptional. (By conscientiously not reviewing certain movies, I save the reader and myself a lot of
time and trouble; call it a knack.) Judging by the trailers for those films, though, it would seem that Chandr…oh, let’s
just call him Jay -- that Jay leans his humor toward what I might call “cheap” and “stupid,” while Dukes producer Gerber
generously calls it “not highbrow” and “accessible.” While the original Dukes certainly fits Gerber’s description as well,
the series simply was not anally-fixated, but Jay’s version sure is. You name the ass-reference, it’s here -- from being as
tight as a tick’s, to “grab-assing,” to rattled sphincters, to having all manner of things from feet to “a doomsday
machine” shoved forcibly up it, there’s simply a whole lotta ass on the minds of these goodly denizens of Hazzard
County. They should hand out moist towelettes with this movie.
And this leads to yet another pointless tangent: It’s not often enough that the word “Cooter” appears in a legitimate online
news headline, so the other day when it did, I rather hastily clicked on it. Suddenly I’m looking at the vented outrage of
one Ben Jones, who formerly (and, as with most of these characters, much more memorably) played the Duke boys’
trusty mechanic, Cooter. (Admit it, you remember him.) Mr. Jones is not pleased with this Dukes movie, even sight-
unseen. He deems it “sleazy” and states that it shows “an arrogant disrespect for our show, for our cast, for America's
families, and for the sensibilities of the heartland of our country.”
Well, first of all, you could make a nice shiraz out o’ them sour grapes. And, at the same time, Mr. Jones has a valid
point, for this movie definitely cheapens and undermines the easygoing earnestness of the original series. (Just once I
would love to see a movie adaptation -- any movie adaptation! -- wherein the producers say: “Hey, let’s not change
anything at all! Instead let’s surprise the fans by doing everything exactly they way they already like it!” Meanwhile, I’ll
be anxiously donning my mittens over in Hell.) It also merits noting that Mr. Jones’ website is a lot spiffier than mine is
so far. And the man clearly does his part for the community. However, with all due respect, a comment must be made:
Friend, your a.k.a. is Cooter. Your character is named after the vulva. (Spare me the turtle talk.) While of course
common decency is wonderful, and rare, let us please acknowledge that your character could just as easily have been
named Tuna Taco. (Actually, maybe they’ll remake this movie in another few years with John Leguizamo…)
That said, I too find the obscenities in the The Dukes of Hazzard movie gratuitous and irritating, definitely -- but for me
that’s not the problem. What’s wrong here is that the semi-crude jokes are mired in the no-man’s land called PG-13.
Oops -- another Personal Theory arises: The best humor is either rated ‘G’ or it’s rated ‘R’ – essentially there is no
satisfying middle-ground. It’s either squeaky-clean tomfoolery or fully cathartic vulgarity, but when money-minded
producers try to bridge that gap, we get a weird genre that could be called the Comedy of Constipation. It wants to “go
crazy” and “let it all hang out,” but then it’ll lose part of the coveted teen demographic, so they sneak in only as much
crudity as the ratings board will allow given proper compensation (ever notice how sometimes a single boobie will make
an otherwise ‘G’-rated movie ‘R’ -- perhaps this is due to inadequate compensation?) In this fashion, The Dukes of
Hazzard grunts and strains, but as far as laffs go, we get stuck with a few flatulent wheezes.
Case in point is Willie Nelson, who adequately stands in for the late Denver Pyle as the curmudgeonly Uncle Jesse. In
addition to competing with Burt Reynolds (as Boss Hogg; shrug) and Jessica Simpson (as Daisy Duke; wait for it) to see
who can sneak through this exercise with the least actual screen time (maybe seven minutes each), Nelson mainly exists
here to tell semi-stale, semi-dirty jokes, stuff about Viagra and bestiality and whatnot. This is puzzling and largely
painless, but by the end he gets a chance to celebrate his real-life love affair with Mary Jane. I’ve got a screenwriter
friend who’s all high and mighty on himself, now that he’s finally become “somebody” in Hollywood, and of late he has
been known to puff the magic dragon with old Willie. Perhaps, upon reading this, he’ll deign to call me back -- if for no
other reason than to yell at me. (Fingers crossed.)
As for the vulgarity, though, what bugs me about this Dukes is that once it decided to depart Squeaky-Clean Land, it
should have gone all the blessed way. When the beloved mechanic and Daisy are riding in the service vehicle, somebody
should have tossed out a line about “a truckful of Cooter.” Likewise, with Daisy aboard, it could have been called
Cooter's “Camel-Toe Truck.” (The Cooter character, who is quite boring here -- you are vindicated, Mr. Jones -- does
indeed evince a creepy interest in owning a pair of Daisy’s short-shorts, or “Daisy Dukes.”) Yeah, this is ghastly talk, but
either keep it clean or put out: Don’t leave us teetering tediously on the brink.
Oh yeah, the plot: The plot is essentially a reworking of The Same Plot from the series. This time, Boss Hogg wants to
steal Jesse’s hooch ranch (and all land surrounding it) to strip-mine Hazzard County for coal deposits, which puts most
of the cops in the state of Georgia as well as Sheriff Roscoe and Deputy Enos (yes, there is an “anus” joke -- ha-ha! --
even less of a surprise than “General Lee” being used as a punny adverb) at odds with Bo and Luke, who must, of
course, Save The Day. There is also some sort of vaguely NASCAR-like local race subplot (guess who wins).
Really, beyond all this, I’d like to take a moment to contemplate whose face looks the more disturbingly stretched by
artificial tampering: Simpson’s or Reynolds’. Okay, there: moment taken.
Oh, and speaking of shiraz, obviously Jay or somebody in charge of this production has a major Australia fetish. Never
before were AC/DC and Air Supply heard, even ironically, in Hazzard County. Plus there’s a hottie Aussie subplot
character (Jacqui Maxwell) who, during a particularly nauseating chase through downtown “Atlanta” (amazingly, NOT
Toronto this time, but New Orleans), offers that she’s going to “chunder.” During this sequence, she and Scott deliver
two lines I could use to sum up the movie if I were mean. They are:
“I need a plastic bag now!”
and
“What is the purpose of this circle?”
But I’m not mean -- just going for record-length in a pointless review -- so I’ll now return as promised to appraising
Chandr…Jay’s movie for what it is.
Let’s see: On the down side, the movie just sort of meanders through a series of setpieces, occasionally throwing in a
weird curveball when things get too obvious. In the exacting hands of true comedic professionals, the audience would be
made to adore the people of Hazzard County even while the creators were ripping the shit out of them. Jay & Co. simply
move everybody around from scene to scene like cardboard cutouts, throwing in the odd ass-reference or apparently
improvised behavioral tic when boredom threatens. This is not at all terrible, but it’s rather like eating an entire box of
Twinkies with all the filling sucked out of them. Personally, I do not eat lard, but the metaphor still holds.
On the up side…man, it’s late…okay, I’ll try: On the up side, it’s sort of interesting to look at Lynda Carter here even
though she’s not actually doing anything. Um, the guy with no pants with the dead armadillo on his head made me feel
better about some of my friends. The sporadic freeze-frames with the deadpan narration (a "stylistic choice" lifted from
the series) are still amsuing. I enjoyed watching Burt Reynolds getting punched in the face (twice). The girls in the
college dorm scene had nice underwear. The thing about the Duke boys impersonating high-echelon Japanese
businessmen made me kind of happy -- and sort of blue that my fave bumblers Bob and Doug McKenzie are unlikely to
make another movie (guys, if I direct it, will you do it??? Seriously. Call me. I miss you. I love you. I'll work for scale.)
Oh yeah -- and that bit in the traffic jam outside Atlanta, in which the cracker truck-driver heaps praise upon the General
Lee and then the semi-intelligent female commuters, black and white, skewer the Dukes for being racist scum of a
heinous era past -- I liked that, too. I even would have liked the conflict between the frightened Dukes and the angry
urban African American fellows, except that the scene just evaporates or perhaps was saved for what is sure to be one
of the most coveted DVDs of the holiday season.
Right, and I was going to talk about Jessica Simpson, too. I honestly do not know why there is a Jessica Simpson. To
me, she’s a face I occasionally see in two dimensions at the supermarket, the face of a young girl apparently taken apart
and reconstructed to look like a cross between a 40-year-old peroxide-junkie and a bulimic whippet slathered in eyeliner.
No offense, but I’m much, much more the Shirley Henderson type. And Henderson really is a better singer.
Oh, and I’d better address this movie’s other come-hither chassis. The car makes no darned sense whatsoever. It’s a car
from 1969, which made it ten years old when the Dukes first started driving it around on television. By my calculations,
this means that in this updated movie, these Dukes should be evading the law at breakneck speeds in a Saturn or Taurus
or comparable mid-size vintage sedan from around 1995.
The jumps are pretty neato, if you’re into that sort of thing. However, the final climactic leap to save Hazzard Country
could have been lensed more zestfully. Actually, the best shots of the car are in the blooper-reel over the closing credits,
wherein it careens out of its intended trajectory several times and crashes embarrassingly badly. Actually, the best laughs
in the whole movie are in the blooper-reel, too. Two thumbs up for the blooper-reel.
I wonder if I can keep this review going until the sun comes up.
Naw, that’s enough. Closing paragraph. Here we have an institution of American popular culture which is a quarter-
century old: That’s about one-ninth the age of America itself! It concerns dubious Redneck types who constantly
obliterate local law-enforcement agents without being shot, killed or imprisoned for life. It’s pretty weird, really. Now
some totally different people have made a congenial and strange yet entirely wit-free movie based on it. Miraculous.
Somebody actually managed to dumb down the Dukes. The project functions not so much as an adapted comedy but
rather as a vague flushing of the pop-culture system, sort of hydro-therapy for the group-mind for people who keep their
brains up their asses. It’s okay as far as total junk goes, but that's it. Well, except to say that this movie won’t hurt
anybody, and it certainly won’t rot away the innocent Heartland of Cooter’s dreams.
The Dukes of Hazzard
Entertainment Value: 5/13
Style: 3/13
Philosophical Insight: 2/13 (It's officially Generosity Day.)
-Gregory Weinkauf, 3 August, 2005
Hazzard County gets a 21st-century makeover, like it or not.
BY GREGORY WEINKAUF
To celebrate the development, production and release of a Major Motion Picture based on the television series The
Dukes of Hazzard, this review shall include numerous paragraphs with thoughts in them.
After the screening, I was sitting in a restaurant, languidly rolling around my mouth some Pellegrino from a modestly
good year, and contemplating this movie which is not coincidentally also called The Dukes of Hazzard. My body was
struggling to digest the toxic high fructose corn syrup in the complimentary soft drink as well as the lethal trans fats in
the complimentary popcorn, and meanwhile, whilst awaiting my far less dangerous soup, my mind was trying to digest
the Dukes press notes. Suddenly (this really happened) I looked up from my evening’s reading to regard looming before
my eyes a large volume containing the complete works of William Shakespeare, which was being cuddled by a restaurant
patron loitering beside my table. The mocking presence of that book hurt nearly as much as the new Duke-boys’ mutual
(and truly weird and entirely out-of-character) punishment-ritual of viciously bashing each other upside the head with the
Atlanta telephone book, which is, as the movie would have it, approximately of the same thickness as all concerned. I
glanced uncomfortably between this person’s light reading and my own, and then relaxed and chuckled at my fate,
realizing that even in Shakespeare’s comedies it is rare to find self-promoting lines as hilarious as the one credited to the
vaguely human-looking creature called Jessica Simpson, who shamelessly refers to herself and country supercracker
Willie Nelson as “musical soulmates.”
Upon gleefully noting this modest and unassuming parallel, a large-ish geyser of Pellegrino and the majority of my lime
issued forth from my nose (this part did not really happen).
You know, while I was tempted with this piece (this written piece, you soundrel!) to go with the headline suggested by
my dear friend James, an Accidental Texan who offered up “Occupational Hazzard” (nice one, fellow!), even the best of
us have to pay our dues once in a while. This year I have steered well clear of The Amityville Horror Again-Again-
Again-Again, House of Waxing Pointless, Besmirched, Die Hard 4: Die Hostage, The Ring Two or Three or Four or
Whatever Already, Even Darker Water, (P)layer Cak (sic), Lindsay Lohan’s Dad: Fully Loaded, Guess Who (Cares --
Not Me!), The Badder News Bears, The Longestest Yard, and The Fourth or Fifth Installment in The Pink Panther Series
Without That Dead Funny Guy In It (the last being quite unceremoniously yanked from distribution), and thus I now feel
like I have to make one of two moral choices: 1. Sit around waiting to review Kevin Smith’s as-yet unmade but already
weary-sounding Fletch movie (you sillies -- just release the brilliant original on DVD again so normal people can afford
it!); or 2. Sit up straight and tall and review The Dukes of Hazzard like a real man.
Okay, so here’s the skinny on the Dukes scenario, which by this point has probably saturated to reach even oblivious
folks like the endangered Yanomamo tribes of the Amazon basin or Peter Travers. In the middle of a strange, foreign land
called American Television, Circa 1979-1985, there lay a peculiar (and apparently stateless) little constituency called
Hazzard County, U.S.A., wherein The Same Plot was reenacted week after blessed week. The Same Plot was this: Two
impossibly pleasant and modelesque “Good Ol’ Boys” named Bo and Luke Duke (who both went on to respectable
singing careers; I even saw Luke as Sweeney Todd once, and he was pretty good) zoomed their 1969 Dodge Charger
(named “The General Lee” after that guy whose team lost, case closed) through crazy rural stunts in order to evade extra-
idiotic law-enforcement agents en route to rescuing their Uncle Jesse’s alcohol farm from the clutches of local kingpin
Boss Hogg, who was essentially a large lump of bacon grease in a pristine white suit and Stetson; plus, every few
minutes, the Duke boys’ buxom cousin Daisy would appear and “help out” by sporting revealing bucolic attire. In
between these segments, truly ghastly companies would push their irritating products on the viewers, whose brains were
transforming into overcooked grits and were thus open to suggestion.
I know because I was there, friends -- even though I always become physically ill at the sound of “country” music
(exactly which country do they mean, Crackerland?) and I don’t particularly like internal-combustion cars or people who
scream “YEE-HAWWWW!” either. Perhaps I -- like many -- was paying attention for some unspoken reason, later given
voice by talented North Carolinan author Lawrence Naumoff in his novel, The Night of the Weeping Women, wherein the
narrator posits that if he were Bo and/or Luke Duke, he’d be getting very busy with Daisy in the back seat of the General
Lee, “cousins or no cousins.” Amen, and pass the pie?
Actually, I have two Personal Theories about The Dukes of Hazzard. One has to do with the original show functioning as
a sort of routine weekly inoculation, much in the way that people view horror movies or cop shows to help them to
process their societal fears; in this case, the fear in question was of Rednecks. The Dukes and their country kin were
such darned nice people existing in a totally fake sweetie-pie fantasyland of small-town America -- where the most
hateful crime was pretty much larceny, brought to justice in sixty tidy minutes -- that they could almost wander into
Mayberry or Cicely, Alaska without being asked to leave due to the obvious lingering taint of a couple of centuries of
arsons, murders, rapes and lynchings. Heck, Star Trek was more socially demanding and reality-based than The Dukes of
Hazzard, which, along with the emotional fortification of observing potentially scary people through the protective shield
of the boob tube, also likely contributed to the latter’s pabulum-like popularity.
The other Personal Theory is that The Entertainment Industry functions in accordance with a foundational edict which
is, more or less, this: “Keep the Americans from thinking too much so they will consume more.” Obviously, this is not
the only industry to prosper from this ploy, but it is fairly clearly the main reason for the existence of the The Dukes of
Hazzard movie, when there are perfectly good copies of David Byrne's twenty-year-old weird country movie True
Stories floating about for cheap.
Since many lesser critics are actually tremendously lonely people who rely upon their outlet to foist creepy personal
issues, insipid family references and whatever other crap upon unsuspecting readers, I’m going to take this opportunity
to tread the cheap road here, too, briefly -- in the interest of full disclosure, of course. When I was a lad, The Dukes of
Hazzard aired on Friday nights, and, aside from The Incredible Hulk running concurrently for a while, there wasn’t
much else for me to do on Friday nights. When I did occasionally have the opportunity to attend those largely terrible
Friday night school dances, I rather hoped to dance with an adorable girl upon whom I had suffered a crush for several
years, whose surname was Gerber -- but she could probably smell the advancing agony of the Writer upon me, and
besides, she rarely showed up at functions for the commoners. Thus, this sweethearts’ dance sadly never happened,
and, judging from how she responded to me (meaning, she didn’t) when we coincidentally boarded the same flight a few
years ago, I’m guessing that her choice (which has achieved symbolic resonance) to leave me in the company of
mediocre media was a firm one. She’s probably married to a yoga instructor or a woman or both by now, and probably
has a tattoo of her cat or her cell-phone on her butt, or so I’d like to think. In any case, the extremely obtuse point is that
the producer of the The Dukes of Hazzard movie is also called Gerber -- and I’d like for him to know, up front, that any
and all opinions expressed here, while of an extremely personal nature, have nothing at all to do with my dismay over one
of his distant relatives leaving me to a life of reviewing movies like this one without so much as the comfort of an
appealing and consistent plus-one.
Whee.
Hey, speaking of Cicely, Alaska, yes, that is indeed Barry “Maurice Minnifield” Corbin you’ll see, uncredited, at the
beginning of this Dukes movie. Even with his shotgun-crazy, slut-daughter-protectin’ antics, he’s a welcome warm-up to
a dubious enterprise. At first, Bo (Seann William Scott, doing his thing again) and Luke (Johnny Knoxville, okay here but
much funnier in the weird-out road-trip adventure Grand Theft Parsons) are too busy making sure that the audience
hears their character-identifying names spoken aloud, so Corbin helpfully chews up the scenery (and even plays
accomplice to the assassination of a tree) to acclimate both the old-school fans and the relatively non-brain-damaged to
the zaniness of Hazzard County. Unfortunately, he then vanishes, and nobody else can match his example (unlike in the
TV series, the actors here seem very confused as to whether they are playing cartoony caricatures or human beings),
which then forces the reviewer to make a choice: To judge the movie against its source material -- or to appraise it by its
own merits (or lack thereof).
While admittedly I’m no neophyte to this franchise, I’m going to go with the latter -- except to make one exhaustingly
lengthy point. This movie is directed by a ruthless Klingon warlord named Chandrasek’HAR! (pronounced with a wicked
grunt on the last syllable), and I have blithely avoided his previous comedies (Super Troopers; Club Dread) because,
frankly, my radar is exceptional. (By conscientiously not reviewing certain movies, I save the reader and myself a lot of
time and trouble; call it a knack.) Judging by the trailers for those films, though, it would seem that Chandr…oh, let’s
just call him Jay -- that Jay leans his humor toward what I might call “cheap” and “stupid,” while Dukes producer Gerber
generously calls it “not highbrow” and “accessible.” While the original Dukes certainly fits Gerber’s description as well,
the series simply was not anally-fixated, but Jay’s version sure is. You name the ass-reference, it’s here -- from being as
tight as a tick’s, to “grab-assing,” to rattled sphincters, to having all manner of things from feet to “a doomsday
machine” shoved forcibly up it, there’s simply a whole lotta ass on the minds of these goodly denizens of Hazzard
County. They should hand out moist towelettes with this movie.
And this leads to yet another pointless tangent: It’s not often enough that the word “Cooter” appears in a legitimate online
news headline, so the other day when it did, I rather hastily clicked on it. Suddenly I’m looking at the vented outrage of
one Ben Jones, who formerly (and, as with most of these characters, much more memorably) played the Duke boys’
trusty mechanic, Cooter. (Admit it, you remember him.) Mr. Jones is not pleased with this Dukes movie, even sight-
unseen. He deems it “sleazy” and states that it shows “an arrogant disrespect for our show, for our cast, for America's
families, and for the sensibilities of the heartland of our country.”
Well, first of all, you could make a nice shiraz out o’ them sour grapes. And, at the same time, Mr. Jones has a valid
point, for this movie definitely cheapens and undermines the easygoing earnestness of the original series. (Just once I
would love to see a movie adaptation -- any movie adaptation! -- wherein the producers say: “Hey, let’s not change
anything at all! Instead let’s surprise the fans by doing everything exactly they way they already like it!” Meanwhile, I’ll
be anxiously donning my mittens over in Hell.) It also merits noting that Mr. Jones’ website is a lot spiffier than mine is
so far. And the man clearly does his part for the community. However, with all due respect, a comment must be made:
Friend, your a.k.a. is Cooter. Your character is named after the vulva. (Spare me the turtle talk.) While of course
common decency is wonderful, and rare, let us please acknowledge that your character could just as easily have been
named Tuna Taco. (Actually, maybe they’ll remake this movie in another few years with John Leguizamo…)
That said, I too find the obscenities in the The Dukes of Hazzard movie gratuitous and irritating, definitely -- but for me
that’s not the problem. What’s wrong here is that the semi-crude jokes are mired in the no-man’s land called PG-13.
Oops -- another Personal Theory arises: The best humor is either rated ‘G’ or it’s rated ‘R’ – essentially there is no
satisfying middle-ground. It’s either squeaky-clean tomfoolery or fully cathartic vulgarity, but when money-minded
producers try to bridge that gap, we get a weird genre that could be called the Comedy of Constipation. It wants to “go
crazy” and “let it all hang out,” but then it’ll lose part of the coveted teen demographic, so they sneak in only as much
crudity as the ratings board will allow given proper compensation (ever notice how sometimes a single boobie will make
an otherwise ‘G’-rated movie ‘R’ -- perhaps this is due to inadequate compensation?) In this fashion, The Dukes of
Hazzard grunts and strains, but as far as laffs go, we get stuck with a few flatulent wheezes.
Case in point is Willie Nelson, who adequately stands in for the late Denver Pyle as the curmudgeonly Uncle Jesse. In
addition to competing with Burt Reynolds (as Boss Hogg; shrug) and Jessica Simpson (as Daisy Duke; wait for it) to see
who can sneak through this exercise with the least actual screen time (maybe seven minutes each), Nelson mainly exists
here to tell semi-stale, semi-dirty jokes, stuff about Viagra and bestiality and whatnot. This is puzzling and largely
painless, but by the end he gets a chance to celebrate his real-life love affair with Mary Jane. I’ve got a screenwriter
friend who’s all high and mighty on himself, now that he’s finally become “somebody” in Hollywood, and of late he has
been known to puff the magic dragon with old Willie. Perhaps, upon reading this, he’ll deign to call me back -- if for no
other reason than to yell at me. (Fingers crossed.)
As for the vulgarity, though, what bugs me about this Dukes is that once it decided to depart Squeaky-Clean Land, it
should have gone all the blessed way. When the beloved mechanic and Daisy are riding in the service vehicle, somebody
should have tossed out a line about “a truckful of Cooter.” Likewise, with Daisy aboard, it could have been called
Cooter's “Camel-Toe Truck.” (The Cooter character, who is quite boring here -- you are vindicated, Mr. Jones -- does
indeed evince a creepy interest in owning a pair of Daisy’s short-shorts, or “Daisy Dukes.”) Yeah, this is ghastly talk, but
either keep it clean or put out: Don’t leave us teetering tediously on the brink.
Oh yeah, the plot: The plot is essentially a reworking of The Same Plot from the series. This time, Boss Hogg wants to
steal Jesse’s hooch ranch (and all land surrounding it) to strip-mine Hazzard County for coal deposits, which puts most
of the cops in the state of Georgia as well as Sheriff Roscoe and Deputy Enos (yes, there is an “anus” joke -- ha-ha! --
even less of a surprise than “General Lee” being used as a punny adverb) at odds with Bo and Luke, who must, of
course, Save The Day. There is also some sort of vaguely NASCAR-like local race subplot (guess who wins).
Really, beyond all this, I’d like to take a moment to contemplate whose face looks the more disturbingly stretched by
artificial tampering: Simpson’s or Reynolds’. Okay, there: moment taken.
Oh, and speaking of shiraz, obviously Jay or somebody in charge of this production has a major Australia fetish. Never
before were AC/DC and Air Supply heard, even ironically, in Hazzard County. Plus there’s a hottie Aussie subplot
character (Jacqui Maxwell) who, during a particularly nauseating chase through downtown “Atlanta” (amazingly, NOT
Toronto this time, but New Orleans), offers that she’s going to “chunder.” During this sequence, she and Scott deliver
two lines I could use to sum up the movie if I were mean. They are:
“I need a plastic bag now!”
and
“What is the purpose of this circle?”
But I’m not mean -- just going for record-length in a pointless review -- so I’ll now return as promised to appraising
Chandr…Jay’s movie for what it is.
Let’s see: On the down side, the movie just sort of meanders through a series of setpieces, occasionally throwing in a
weird curveball when things get too obvious. In the exacting hands of true comedic professionals, the audience would be
made to adore the people of Hazzard County even while the creators were ripping the shit out of them. Jay & Co. simply
move everybody around from scene to scene like cardboard cutouts, throwing in the odd ass-reference or apparently
improvised behavioral tic when boredom threatens. This is not at all terrible, but it’s rather like eating an entire box of
Twinkies with all the filling sucked out of them. Personally, I do not eat lard, but the metaphor still holds.
On the up side…man, it’s late…okay, I’ll try: On the up side, it’s sort of interesting to look at Lynda Carter here even
though she’s not actually doing anything. Um, the guy with no pants with the dead armadillo on his head made me feel
better about some of my friends. The sporadic freeze-frames with the deadpan narration (a "stylistic choice" lifted from
the series) are still amsuing. I enjoyed watching Burt Reynolds getting punched in the face (twice). The girls in the
college dorm scene had nice underwear. The thing about the Duke boys impersonating high-echelon Japanese
businessmen made me kind of happy -- and sort of blue that my fave bumblers Bob and Doug McKenzie are unlikely to
make another movie (guys, if I direct it, will you do it??? Seriously. Call me. I miss you. I love you. I'll work for scale.)
Oh yeah -- and that bit in the traffic jam outside Atlanta, in which the cracker truck-driver heaps praise upon the General
Lee and then the semi-intelligent female commuters, black and white, skewer the Dukes for being racist scum of a
heinous era past -- I liked that, too. I even would have liked the conflict between the frightened Dukes and the angry
urban African American fellows, except that the scene just evaporates or perhaps was saved for what is sure to be one
of the most coveted DVDs of the holiday season.
Right, and I was going to talk about Jessica Simpson, too. I honestly do not know why there is a Jessica Simpson. To
me, she’s a face I occasionally see in two dimensions at the supermarket, the face of a young girl apparently taken apart
and reconstructed to look like a cross between a 40-year-old peroxide-junkie and a bulimic whippet slathered in eyeliner.
No offense, but I’m much, much more the Shirley Henderson type. And Henderson really is a better singer.
Oh, and I’d better address this movie’s other come-hither chassis. The car makes no darned sense whatsoever. It’s a car
from 1969, which made it ten years old when the Dukes first started driving it around on television. By my calculations,
this means that in this updated movie, these Dukes should be evading the law at breakneck speeds in a Saturn or Taurus
or comparable mid-size vintage sedan from around 1995.
The jumps are pretty neato, if you’re into that sort of thing. However, the final climactic leap to save Hazzard Country
could have been lensed more zestfully. Actually, the best shots of the car are in the blooper-reel over the closing credits,
wherein it careens out of its intended trajectory several times and crashes embarrassingly badly. Actually, the best laughs
in the whole movie are in the blooper-reel, too. Two thumbs up for the blooper-reel.
I wonder if I can keep this review going until the sun comes up.
Naw, that’s enough. Closing paragraph. Here we have an institution of American popular culture which is a quarter-
century old: That’s about one-ninth the age of America itself! It concerns dubious Redneck types who constantly
obliterate local law-enforcement agents without being shot, killed or imprisoned for life. It’s pretty weird, really. Now
some totally different people have made a congenial and strange yet entirely wit-free movie based on it. Miraculous.
Somebody actually managed to dumb down the Dukes. The project functions not so much as an adapted comedy but
rather as a vague flushing of the pop-culture system, sort of hydro-therapy for the group-mind for people who keep their
brains up their asses. It’s okay as far as total junk goes, but that's it. Well, except to say that this movie won’t hurt
anybody, and it certainly won’t rot away the innocent Heartland of Cooter’s dreams.
The Dukes of Hazzard
Entertainment Value: 5/13
Style: 3/13
Philosophical Insight: 2/13 (It's officially Generosity Day.)
-Gregory Weinkauf, 3 August, 2005
| REVIEWS |
| ÜberCiné |
™
| All Material Here © ÜberCiné (unless otherwise noted) - All Rights Reserved. |
 | |  |
| Luke and Daisy enjoy Bo's thoughtful review of Stealth. © 2005 Warner Bros. Pictures |