The Dukes Of Hazzard is the latest old TV series to get resurrected and given the big screen treatment. As in most cases, including the recent Starsky & Hutch and Bewitched, the film does the small screen version a disservice. It could be that nostalgia and a faltering memory bathe the original series in a more flattering light, but even so it's hard to believe that had it been as dreary as this, anyone would have suggested updating it for the movies.
Early on the curvaceous Daisy Duke (Jessica Simpson) talks about always having to rescue her cousins Luke (Johnny Knoxville) and Bo (Seann William Scott) whenever they get themselves in trouble. "Then I'm gonna have to shake my ass at somebody to get them out," she moans. It's the same tactic director Jay Chandrasekhar resorts to whenever things start to drag, which is all too often. The frequent shots of Simpson busting out of a skimpy outfit are testimony to the shortcomings of a film which, unlike the General Lee, fails to take off.
Watching endless scenes of the famed orange 1969 Dodge Charger, with its signature confederate flag on the roof, wheel-spinning round the fields of Hazzard County is, surprisingly, not as absorbing as it sounds. Nor is seeing the umpteenth police car flip over and crash. All of which might be forgivable had the moments inbetween the vehicularcide (or whatever is the phrase for the annihilation of hundreds of cars) been remotely amusing. But alas, they were not.
Both Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville have the ability to be funny, but unlike say Owen Wilson or Vince Vaughn, neither is inherently comical. Instead they are reliant on good material, something singularly lacking in The Dukes Of Hazzard. The plot hangs loosely around the plan by the sartorially splendid but corrupt commissioner Boss Hogg (a very leathery Burt Reynolds) to turn Hazzard's rural beauty into a strip mine. It's a plan opposed by the Duke clan which also includes Uncle Jesse (a self-conscious Willie Nelson), and Pauline (Lynda Carter).
The feisty Daisy has a well-earned reputation for handling herself in the face of the crude advances of Hazzard's redneck males. So when a newcomer to the bar she works in froths at the sight of her in her skimpy shorts, a local warns "look away, look away." It's a caution that could equally be aimed at The Dukes Of Hazzard.
Kevin Murphy
