I think this is a film that most people have seen at one point or another. It's just not very good. At all. The original "Smokey and the Bandit" film from 1977 was a terrific road chase movie with a fun cast, a clever script, great interaction and romance between Burt Reynolds and Sally Field, tons of awesome stunts, and a cool car (Bandit's black Pontiac Trans-Am). The 1980 sequel to the original (which I reviewed a long time ago on this site) was a huge let-down. Then there's this piece of crud. Burt Reynolds isn't even in it until the last five mintues for a strange cameo during a dream sequence.

Here's the plot: Jerry Reed takes an offer to pretend to be the Bandit so he can interfere with Jackie Gleason's Buford T. Justice's mission to deliver a fake shark to Florida on a bet. So for the next hour and fifteen minutes, Reed grins and laughs while his stunt double abuses a 1982 Trans-Am in various ways (and about 3000 other cars get wrecked along the way, too) to thwart the retiring Sheriff Justice in completing his mission to deliver the shark in time to win the bet. There's lots of chase scenes, but the film doesn't even come close to the feel or thrill of the original. It's just plain stupidity.

This movie has no continuity, no flow, and no real direction. And it's badly edited too. There's a part where the Sheriff and his dumb clod son complain about being stuck in traffic for "two hours;" soon after, the corrupt folk who put him up to the bet brag about holding them up for "two minutes." So which was it Mr. Director, two hours or two minutes? It's little things like this that make the film such a piece of hack work.

Scene to watch for: Paul Williams dressed in drag in a sleazy hotel. Yep, it's pure punishment.