Smokey and the Bandit is a very entertaining movie. It is also dumb as hell.

When I (Cary) first saw this movie, I knew I wanted two things. One was a Trans-Am, and the other was Sally Field. Neither happened. When Smokey hit the screen in 1977, I was driving a Pinto station wagon with fake wood on the side. The furthest vehicle from that was a Trans Am.

If you want to watch a thought-provoking film with a sophisticated plot, skip this. If you’re looking for a fun, mindless movie with car chases and banal dialogue, you’ve found your film. At sixteen, I thought it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen, and at sixty-four, I rolled my eyes as much as my former students often did at me.

In 1977, CB radios were a craze. A tool used by truck drivers somehow spread to people’s cars, and in retrospect, it is an embarrassing period in American History. Kim could not remember much about it, and that’s a good thing. A few times, driving a company truck, I attempted clever banter over the device, and in retrospect, it was just sad.

There are three stars in this film: Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, and Jackie Gleason. Reynolds was at his peak, Field was on her way up, and Gleason had seen better days, hence his participation in this movie. Back in the day, Burt Reynolds was a huge and popular movie star. He had a mustache, and I had one for many years-probably influenced by him. People have joked that I had a ‘porn-star mustache.’ The only porn that existed in the seventies was on sixteen-millimeter movie projectors in the back rooms of your local Elks Club or Moose Lodge.

The plot is this: “Big Enos” Burdette (played by 6’7 “Pat McCormack) and his son, “Little Enos” (5’2” Paul Williams), are wealthy Southerners who challenge truckers to drive to Texarkana, Texas, to pick up 400 cases of Coors and return to Atlanta within 28 hours. The film begins with a driver being arrested. Crossing specific state lines was considered bootlegging and illegal. Father and son find and challenge Bo “Bandit” Darville (Reynolds), who supplies him with a bankroll of money for beer and a car to function as a “blocker” for the semi carrying the suds.

Coors Beer was not sold east of the Mississippi River until 1981 and not nationally until 1986. It was special because you could not go to your local store and get it. President Gerald Ford hid some in his luggage after a Colorado trip when he returned to the White House.

Bandit recruits his pal Cledus ‘The Snowman’ Snow to drive the truck. Bandit awakens him from sleeping, but Snowman (country singer Jerry Reed) has perfect hair in bed. The snowman takes a massive basset hound named Fred with him, and we are off. Reed sings “East Bound and Down,” going out, and “West Bound and Down” on their return. There are worse country songs.

The strategy is for the Bandit to speed ahead and distract the Smokeys (police), allowing Snowman to drive as fast as possible to Texarkana. They arrived too early, and the beer distributor wasn’t open yet. They break in and steal the beer. They are on the way back with the Bandit in the lead, and he spots a woman on the highway wearing a wedding dress. Enter Sally Field as Carrie, and she gets in, and they take off. Snowman is following, and she removes her wedding dress and litters the highway out of the T top, prompting Snowman to query, “What’s she wearing now?” She would be given the CB handle “Frog.”

Soon we meet Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Gleason), modeled after a law enforcement officer Reynolds’ father knew in Florida. Former NFL player and Tarzan actor Mike Henry played “Junior,” the sheriff’s bumbling son who was to marry Carrie. An interstate chase ensues after the woman who left him at the altar.

Kim made an excellent observation, saying, “Look at how he knows where to go without GPS?” How did we? That is one “uh-huh” as Bandit often leaves the road, drives through everything imaginable, and is right back on the interstate effortlessly. Kim says they must have the ‘Waze’ app.

 A second “uh-huh” is when, very early in the film, Bandit and Snowman establish a system to change channels on the CB, yet Sheriff Justice always manages to find them. Third, He also ridiculously always locates the Trans-Am in ‘hot pursuit.’

I repeat, it’s stupid, and it’s also fun if you can get past some of the explicit silliness. Bandit gains many helpers on the radio, who perform various acts to distract and alter the police chase. The time Reynolds and Field are ‘in the car’ is visually highly unrealistic, even by 1970s technological standards. There is a time that Frog is driving (very well and really fast), a funeral, a stop along the road for the dog, and some Bandit/Frog fun when she tells him “Take off your hat,” roadblocks that are as effective as first graders with Matchbox cars, driving over and through a creek. Snowman gets into a fight in a bar, then runs over a cache of motorcycles. Kim noted, “It’s definitely make-believe.”

With all due respect, I do not know how anyone in law enforcement could enjoy this film because it makes the southern police officers look like the most incompetent people in the solar system.

There were two sequels made, and we will pass on those. Reynolds and Field had a curious on-and-off relationship in the late seventies. When she was nominated (and won—her first of two) for an Oscar for best actress (for Norma Rae), he refused to take her. Once his career began to decline, he was often not a likable man. For all the money he made, he later declared bankruptcy and spent more than I ever made in a year on toupees. As Mr. Spock may observe, “fascinating.”

Kim’s rating is 1-10, giving it a four or five. I’m sure it was much higher in the late seventies.