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The movie never recovers from his self-inflicted dramatic handicap. Catching up with this trumped-up soap opera history makes for a deadening earful of second-hand exposition. A lot of unfortunate things have supposedly happened since we last saw Bandit and his friends depart for Boston.

In the sequel, Pat McCormick and Paul Williams return as Big Enos and Little Enos Burdette, a ridiculous father-and-son team of Texas fat cats who propose the new race from Florida to Dallas.This time the Burdettes wish to deliver a symbolic gift - a live elephant - to the Republican National Convention.īefore the trip can begin, Bandit must be placed back on his feet. But in the sequel everything is subordinated to the tiresome question of whether or not poor Bandit, who has inexplicably gone to the dogs between pictures, can pull himself together and become his own best friend.Īt the end of 'Smokey and the Banit,' the hero and his sidekicks, Sally Field as a runaway bride named Carie and Jerry Reed as a trucker named Cledus, were supposed to be bound for Boston, having accepted a new wager to return to Atlanta with a bowl of clam chowder within 18 hours. His only real problem was winning the wager, which demanded that even romance blossom at an accelerated pace. In the first movie, he agreed to drive from Atlanta to Texarkana and return with a shipment of Coors within 28 hours.Ī human equivalent of the Roadrunner, Bandit was designed for excapist kicks rather than psychological insight. I suspect Reynolds may have been the selfdefeating instigator of this miscalculation.Īs originally characterized, Bandit was a resourceful, dashing modern saddle tramp, an independent trucker who could never resist an outrageous sporting proposition. Someone insisted on giving the sequel what was probably described as 'a new dimension' by tinkering with the character of the hero.

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It seems to prove that entertainers who discover a successful formula may not have the foggiest notion of how to protect, duplicate and sustain it. The company must have been lucky and inspired the first time around, because the inevitable sequel - 'Smokey and the Bandit II,' which opens today, at area theaters - is a premeditated embarrassment. And Hal Needham, directing his first feature after a 20-year career as a stunt man, appeared raring to go: The movie was a streamlined, happy-go-lucky triumph. Nothing special was expected at the box office.īut Burt Reynolds recruited Sally Field for the project, and they emerged as a fresh, winning romantic comedy team.

No one was impressed by the original script. 'Smokey and the Bandit,' the runner-up hit of three summers ago (the summer of 'Stars Wars') was a happy accident.

Smokey and the bandit movies without burt reynolds