THE DUKES OF HAZZARD

What’s the damage?

32 cars run off the road, another 11 blowed up real good, 16 vehicles rammed off bridges, 4 cop cars done tumbled into the water, 16 flaming arrows shot, 7 Molotov Cocktails tossed, 17 windshields shot out, 3 sets of tits bursting at the seams, one-half ton of gravel churned by squealing tires, 1 wild mob breaking down a courthouse door, 4 Negros shamefully stereotyped, and at least 2 legendary performers reaching deep into their bag of shame and pulling out career lows.

Surely you’re not referring to Seann William Scott? Or Johnny Knoxville?

Knoxville bags chicks, falls down, screams, and runs about, so he’s off the hook. But Mr. Scott, who painted on that ridiculous five o’clock shadow? Who knew American Pie would be your salad days?

Christ! I suppose you’re going to say that this is the worst Shithouse offering yet?

Not quite, but I can’t remember anything so haphazard and mindless. By comparison, Dirty Love was three teeming acts of Elizabethan drama. A car exploded, a gun was fired, characters screeched across the screen, Jessica Simpson’s gams made an appearance, Willie Nelson cracked a joke, AC/DC blared on the soundtrack, and then it was over. Sure, the old war horse “rich SOB tries to steal the family farm” was whispered about, but it is no joke to say this movie was absolutely devoid of plot. It was a cacophony of gibberish, a gnashing of rotten teeth — the desperate cries of a rape victim at midnight on a lonely road in a faraway town. It was senselessness itself; the coupling of the desperate and the damned. No man — no professor or learned gent alike — could hope to make sense of it.

Talk me through it, here — how many minutes passed until the big bar fight?

As the timer neared the 15-minute mark, the Boar’s Nest opened its hellish gates to hootin’, hollerin’, broken pool cues, smashed bottles, and several dozen pounds of peanut shells. The circle was complete with the following exchange:

“Don’t hit ‘im, that’s A.J. Foyt!”

“The fourth!”

Any critters about?

Your assorted possums, armadillos, coons, and hound dogs, along with a stray cow or two.

Count off the Southern Cracker stereotypes, would you please?

Luke Duke is chased from the bedroom of the town whore by a pappy with a shotgun; the only blacks we see in all of Hazzard County are in the jail; NASCAR is the next best thing to fellating Jesus; crazy contraptions are the rule, like the “Hillbilly Wind Chimes” (beer cans on a string); moonshine is still run across county lines like we never left Cannonball Run; and when in doubt, play “Mississippi Queen”, preferably when cars are spinning out of control.

What is the “Law of the Convenient Ramp?”

Regardless of the situation, but most prominently during a chase sequence involving no fewer then three dozen police cars, some sort of ramp — wood, dirt, sand, or the charred remains of another car — will appear at just the right time to assure a clean escape. Needless to say, it will all be captured in slow-motion.

Does the soiled diaper that is the screenplay at least give Burt Reynolds the most memorable line?

Thankfully, yes. As Jefferson Davis “Boss” Hogg, Reynolds cries, “That road better be shut down tighter than a tick’s ass.”

What about those Willie Nelson jokes?

Q: “What do you get when you cross a donkey with an onion?”
A: “A piece of ass that brings a tear to your eye.”

Is the farm saved and all of Hazzard County grateful?

Is Jessica Simpson the most deserving of a hastily arranged kidnapping, brutal beating with tire irons, and furious scrub with steel wool?