Help Me Out Here A Second, Folks . . .

Because I always enjoyed hearing Burt Reynolds laugh – and he’s got a good one – I thought I’d watch Smokey and The Bandit, since Burt Reynolds recently passed and the movie was suddenly free on Amazon Prime.

First, the laugh:



Then, the only funny scene – and I mean the only funny scene – from the movie, featuring said laugh:



Then my wife, also caught up in Reynolds nostalgia, decided to watch the movie as well. We watched it independently, me on the way home from work, she at night after everyone else had gone to bed. I’d never seen the movie all the way through, while she remembered watching it several times.

After the rewatching, we compared notes. And neither one of us could figure out why the movie is all that good.

As I mentioned before, there’s only one really funny scene in the film, coming at the expense of Paul Williams, who always had a sense of humor about his lack of height.

The rest? Meh.

And my wife was taken aback at how the women in the film were pretty much objectified sexually, and that was about it.

And the more I watch these “trucker films,” the less I understand their appeal.

BIG NOTE: This does not mean I don’t like truckers, or appreciate what they do. I just think they’re poorly represented in the literature.

Truck drivers and CB radios and such had their brief, inexplicable moment in the sun in the late 1970s. That romantic appeal to the road, freedom, apple pie and burgers at the roadside greasy spoon. And all that defiance to authority. So American.

But why is this movie funny?

And why, when those mailboxes go flying, doesn’t the windshield of the Trans Am shatter when it gets hit by the debris?

Hollywood’s Trucker Era might have been the last victims of the Rural Purge. Though that doesn’t explain The Dukes of Hazzard.

ANOTHER BIG NOTE: Again, I’m not saying you’re wrong if you like this film. That’s your business. I’m just saying I’m having a little trouble understanding the appeal.

A REALLY BIG NOTE: And I understand the Coors thing. Now. Had nothing to do with bootlegging or alcohol content at all. It was just unpasteurized and had to be kept refrigerated. Or at least I think.

A PONDERABLE: This was the second-highest grossing film released in 1977, behind Star Wars. Figure that out.