Movie Review: Smokey and the Bandit, 2

(UK: "Smokey and the Bandit Ride Again")

The perfect tagline for this movie would have been "All the fun and thrills of NASCAR without any of the heady intellectualism."

It was that good.

From the very first frame, Smokey and the Bandit 2 promises to be all action, no exposition. We join our heroes -- or no, some other people, actually -- in the air above some kind of rally attended by well-dressed, clearly Southern ladies and gentlemen, who are gathered around the caboose-end of a stationary train. Two men in a plane, apparently a bomber dating back to WWI, and presumably high above the train (there is no establishing shot), dump buckets of shit into the air to fall onto the crowd (apparently) below. So goes the opening proposition of what (according to my mom) proves to be the best sequel to Smokey and the Bandit ever made: "Shit falling on people is funny."

The shitfall is followed soon after by another plane ride, this time taken by other people we don't know -- the ones the shit has fallen on, probably -- who dump red paint from a cropduster over a party of equally (exactly equally) well-attired garden party guests. Some ten minutes later, if we listen closely, we can deduce that the feuding parties are Texas gubernatorial candidates who are trying to earn the endorsement of the current Texas governor, who declares that he will not endorse either of them (due to their shenanigans). Luckily (for the movie), one set of candidates overhears the governor then insisting that he must get a shipment from Miami to Dallas in only nine days, or else.

Enter the Bandit.

Bandit's truck-driver pal "Snowman" is commissioned by the governor-hopefuls to get the Bandit to drive (with) the cargo from Miami to Dallas for a payout of half a million dollars. Snowman finds the Bandit drunk in a hotel room and gives the longest speech of the movie, which serves as a frame for every "man, that guy is drunk" gag invented before 1980. Bandit belches, stumbles, is unable to articulate even the simplest response; after a few seconds of this, the performance annoys the savvy viewer...but it continues. In fact, it continues so long that it becomes funny again, the way that Sideshow Bob stepping on those rakes in "Cape Feare" comes back to funny. (Or, in the case that you don't appreciate "man that guy is drunk" gags initially, it becomes funny for the first time.)

The Bandit's love interest from the first movie, again at the altar with Junior, the son of Sheriff Buford T. Justice, leaves in the middle of her wedding (when the preacher picks up a phone placed to the side of the altar, then insists that she take the call because "it's long distance") to join Snowman in helping the Bandit back to his Trans-Am-driving feet. They put him through a Rocky-style montage that involves him using one of those machines that's supposed to vibrate fat away, and he's ready to hit the road.

No one ever asks what makes the Bandit, who drives a Trans-Am and not an 18-wheeler, necessary. It appears to be a complete, bald-faced contrivance.

Over the course of the movie, which I won't recount scene-by-scene here (in order to not ruin it for you), the following plot points are also contrived: the cargo turns out to be an elephant; the elephant requires medical attention, which is provided by an "Italian gynecologist" who is left behind by an ambulance at a refueling station and gets the elephant drunk on Italian wine (from which we see no fallout); the elephant is, of course, pregnant; Sheriff Buford T. Justice, whose jurisdiction is apparently infinite, chases the Bandit and Snowman across three states, meeting Mean Joe Green along the way and having his car destroyed in a fall off a bridge being pulled up; the Bandit becomes the love interest of aforementioned elephant; Sheriff Justice calls in his Canadian relatives, named Gaylord (exactly as it sounds) and Reginald (who [for no discernible reason] comes in singing an opera duet with an unidentified woman who rides along in his police car), to help capture the Bandit; trucks and police cars clash to predictable end in the middle of a desert mesa, in what can only be described as a trucker revenge-orgy; the Bandit and Snowman get away from Justice but are waylaid by the elephant's giving birth; the Bandit eventually wins the girl by caring more about the elephant (her tears are like people tears!) than finishing the run.

Now, movies that use Deus ex machina contrivances to sew up otherwise ordinary or reasonable plotlines are annoying; we get the impression that the writers just weren't trying hard enough. It's a cop-out.

Smokey and the Bandit 2, however, is comprised so completely of contrivances that it cannot possibly be considered a betrayal of a reasonable universe. Reason simply does not exist in this movie.

The writers prove their mettle in their dedication to absolute absurdity by leaving plot points dangling left and right -- not one gets tied up by the end, in fact; the two elephants are hitched in chariot-style circus carriers to the back of the Trans-Am -- as though to say "We don't have time for plot or explaining things or making any kind of sense! We're making a movie!" This kind of exuberant disregard for all reason can only be respected -- respected and laughed at -- the way one would respect a particularly talented snake-oil salesman. You don't actually buy what he's selling, but you like listening to his spiel, despite yourself.

After a certain point, in fact, I began to wonder if the writers were making fun of us, the viewers, in the way one feels Monty Python's (incomparable) Flying Circus abuses its audience. "How much will they put up with?" you can almost hear them asking each other, giggling, enraptured. "Let's see if we can add something else! Ooh! Fart joke!! That's a good one!!"

I can't wait to see what they came up with for Smokey and the Bandit 3 (1983).