Review: The Dukes of Hazzard

Jay Chandrasekhar’s film is at least a loyal dog.

The Dukes of Hazzard
Photo: Warner Bros.

How Jay Chandrasekhar got to direct The Dukes of Hazzard is beyond me, but I’d like to think that some stoner intern at Warner Bros. was responsible for introducing his boss to the pleasures of the Broken Lizard films, especially the witty and delirious fusion of unbridled teenage sexuality, horror tropes, and pop codes embodied by Club Dread’s awesome live version of Pac-Man. But save for a stretch of celluloid that takes cousins Bo (Seann William Scott) and Luke Duke (Johnny Knoxville) from Hazzard Country to Atlanta—beginning with an antsy traffic jam that reveals a Confederate flag printed on the roof of their orange Dodge and concludes with the boys wearing black face and incurring the wrath of a group of African-Americans—it’s clear from watching the film that Chandrasekhar’s free rein behind the camera was limited to some 15 minutes. But that’s not to say that this big screen adaptation of Gy Waldron’s 1979-85 television series sees Chandrasekhar’s typically subversive vision completely lobotomized: Even as the film tediously tends to its arbitrary plot, Michael Weston pencil-twirling cop and Kevin Heffernen’s bracing alien-obsessed hillbilly suggest infiltrators from some Broken Lizard alternate universe, while Chandrasekhar displays almost oneiric reverence for the iconography that has earned Dukes of Hazzard a permanent place in the annals of pop culture. That means that the stars of this completely disposable show are not the big names (no offense to William Scott, whose spastic energy is laudable), but Jessica Simpson’s many cut-offs, the narrated freeze frames, and the Duke boys’ skids onto, off of, and over Louisiana-as-Georgia’s backroads and freeways. Considering there was nothing to Dukes of Hazzard besides its raging General Lee and Catherine Bach’s famous dukes, that makes Chandrasekhar’s film a loyal dog.

Score: 
 Cast: Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott, Jessica Simpson, Willie Nelson, Lynda Carter, Michael Weston, Kevin Heffernen, David Koechner, Jack Polick, Burt Reynolds  Director: Jay Chandrasekhar  Screenwriter: John O'Brien  Distributor: Warner Bros.  Running Time: 106 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 2005  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.