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Bo & Luke Duke (Seann William Scott & Johnny Knoxville) are the infamous cousins who run a moonshine business with their Uncle Jesse (Willie Nelson). They are constantly running afoul of the authorities and the big, bad businessman of Hazzard County, Boss Hogg (Burt Reynolds). When their beloved General Lee isn’t getting them out of a scrape, they call in the big guns with cousin Daisy Duke (Jessica Simpson) shaking her ass(ets) to form a distraction of inhumanly hot proportions. “That’s why we love you,” says Uncle Jesse as any heterosexual male over the age of two should admit.

It’s absolutely impossible for this film to ride the coattails of its storyline for entertainment, but our skepticism turns to hope early on with Bo’s choice to listen to an Al Unser Jr. book-on-tape read by Laurence Fishburne. That’s the kind of bizarro humor that can save any comedy and with the director of the Broken Lizard features at the helm (Jay Chandrasekhar) we’re peaked to discover what else he may have up his sleeve. Chandrasekhar brought along his fellow Lizards for cameos and between Kevin Heffernan’s tighty-whitey-clad hick (whose conversation about a Chinese fuse is a highlight) and a blatant-but-hysterical homage to Super Troopers, we may as well have called it Broken Lizard’s The Dukes of Hazzard.

We must, nevertheless, look at Mr. Chandrasekhar’s skills behind the camera because I suspect without him, even a mild recommendation of the film wouldn’t be within striking distance. Super Troopers may have just been a lark designed for the sole intent of delivering laugh-after-laugh (however unsuccessfully) and introducing the world to the next Monty Python/Kids-in-the-Hall wannabes. In Club Dread, he revealed a sure hand at telling a story (no matter how ridiculous) with a keen eye and confident straight face towards how to do a satire of the horror genre. Dukes doesn’t reach to its heights, but he still upstages a no-talent like Todd Phillips who couldn’t find the humor in last year’s Starsky & Hutch even with a built-in compass of a cast (Stiller, Wilson, Vaughn, etc…)

And who knew in the summer of 2005 that I would be able to say (with mucho confidence) that Chandrasekhar knows how to shoot a chase sequence better than Michael Bay. Jay relaxes his camera where Bay shuttles it around like a epileptic on Ritalin. We’re not talking Bullitt or Ronin here, but Chandrasekhar keeps the camera (mostly) at a safe distance and produces some solid stunts and a nearly all-pursuit third act that keeps us involved as we waver in how much we are actually enjoying the film.

Playing it close to the vest might not have been the most audacious approach to the material in this age of anachronistic Brady Bunch flicks and whatever the hell Bewitched was supposed to be, but there are some nice touches to appease both critical camps. The whole “South will rise again” implication by the name and imprinted flag on the Dodge Charger gets its due in a very funny scene. They may have jettisoned going with the early 80s setting, but it’s amusing to watch a South that still revels in NASCAR, homemade liquor and hasn’t progressed past cassette players. Nelson doesn’t do more than recite dirty jokes and Reynolds is given even less. (Not even the “goo-goo-goo” capper to each week’s show gets a spin.) But Knoxville and Scott have enough fun and you’ll even spot a few chops from Simpson if you’re not distracted too terribly.

You may have heard about Ben Jones’ complaints about this translation being overly vulgar and destroying the wholesome family qualities that the CBS series could muster by turning an article of clothing into a sexual metaphor and placing “Cooter comin’ at ya” into the national lexicon. Sorry you didn’t get offered a role, Ben, but this Dukes is actually rather tame and would have no problem fitting into the early 80s censor borders, let alone in the racier 2005. In fact, the PG-13 gets pushed further during the credit outtakes with some “Jackass”-like behavior from Knoxville and a moment from the immortal Joe Don Baker that I would love to see on an AFI highlight reel. Chandrasekhar, like Joe Don, may never live to see such a glorious day but they can take solace in succeeding where most would have stumbled.

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=12683&reviewer=198
originally posted: 08/05/05 14:42:37
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