Once upon a time, the Box Office Fairy sewed together a form-fitting pair of denim cutoffs.
No one knows if the Box Office Fairy is good or evil; she merely casts her spells and lets the market sort out the details, sordid or sublime.
Hollywood mortals discovered the denim shorts and asked Jessica Simpson to try them on. They were wicked pleased with what they saw, and commissioned a script.
Two bikinis, a halter top and assorted pairs of 4-inch heels later, we have “The Dukes of Hazzard,” which purports to be a remake of a TV show but is more accurately a remake of Jessica’s vapid modeling career.
| ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’
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Throw in car chases for the dead spots when Jessica is tied up in wardrobe, and it passes for a movie.
Many people will love “The Dukes of Hazzard,” those fans of the mythical Stoopid South waxing nostalgic for inbred cousins, villains in ice-cream suits and that innocent time when NASCAR was sponsored by Winston cigarettes, not Nextel. Some of those people include one of my own children, who will be written out of the will in favor of a more discriminating sister, who was decent enough not to laugh when the outhouse blew up.
Tan my Yankee hide fer choosing last year’s “Starsky & Hutch” remake. It’s a battle between winking irony and winking acceptance, and “Dukes” fans never met a flying car they didn’t eagerly accept into the Sacred Brotherhood of Yee-Haw. “The Dukes of Hazzard” as a movie is no worse or better than an episode of the 1979-1985 TV show, but it’ll cost you $9.25 better spent on moonshine.
If you have to ask for a plot, you can’t afford it. Bo and Luke Duke (Method morons Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville) drive fast and meet purty gals while delivering corn liquor for Uncle Jesse (Willie Nelson). Cousin Daisy (Simpson) wears push-up bras and punches any man audacious enough to stare at the results. The Dukes are sorely put upon by Boss Hogg, portrayed by Burt Reynolds.
Reynolds, Simpson, Nelson and Lynda Carter often forget they are in a movie, so intent are they to win the Dixie Cup, awarded annually to the worst actor in a film where a Dodge Charger busts through a red barn.
For fans of old school, grainy film entertainment, it’s all here: The hood slide. The double take. The whole fall-in-the-mud, chain-tied-to-the-axle, git-to-the-courthouse-by-noon-or-there-ain’t-gonna-be-any-town-left redneck trifecta. At least in “Deliverance,” they were kind enough to cover it all with a flood at the end.
Purists will spit a wad of chaw at a liberal twist, with the Dukes asking an activist judge to block a strip mine. Are those Yankees nuts? Don’t they know how much ‘gator juice Uncle Jesse could sell to a bunch of red-gummed coal diggers?
Aside from that little slip, “Dukes” is nearly unblemished bombast and buffoonery. With Knoxville smirking his way through, it’s one long episode of “Jackass,” with worse writers.
I won’t try this time to tell you what to like, I’m only telling you what I didn’t much like.
When it comes to movies, there’s smart-dumb.
And there’s dumb-dumb.
And there’s Jessica Simpson. Happy August, America. Enjoy the shorts.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
“The Dukes of Hazzard”
*½
PG-13 for language, sexual innuendo and action violence|1 hour, 37 minutes|ACTION COMEDY|Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar, written by John O’Brien based on the TV characters created by Gy Waldron; starring Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott, Jessica Simpson, Burt Reynolds and Willie Nelson|Opens today at area theaters.
