Stand on It!

I was 16 years old when Smokey and the Bandit came out, so my best friend Brian and I know every line for every character. With that said, when I first found this movie while streaming, I thought it was a rip-off remake, which I would not watch. Then I researched it and saw it was a tribute movie and that John Schneider was actually an extra in the original. That got my attention and piqued my interest, so I watched it. I watched in the spirit in which it was made, not as a bad remake, but as a quirky tribute. I really wanted to like it, but I didn't. I only laughed twice.

Characters and Dialog: I found it amusing how they switched up the names and what they referenced, but the acting was horrible. The actors sounded like they were actors reading or just saying their lines from a script, not actual characters talking to each other. The way they portrayed the different personalities was wooden, and that was for everyone. I actually cringed when some of the lines were said, which really surprised me. The character of Sheriff Cletus T Necessary was the worst. If he was trying to emulate Jackie Gleason, it was an epic fail. I cringed at most of Sheriff Necessary's lines, sometimes yelling at the TV, "No," (as in 'Don't say that'). There were so many missed opportunities for greatness; great lines missed, omitted, or just flubbed. Burt Reynolds, Jerry Reed, and Jackie Gleason actually lived the words they said, we believed them and believed in them. The actors in this film just read their lines off of a dialog page and then repeated them in front of the camera.

Car Chases: The car chases and crashes didn't make any sense. There was the set-up shot, some mumble jumble in the middle, and then the end shot. Where the police car ended up (lake or pond, playing field, flatbed trailer, rolling down an embankment, etc) made no sense based upon where it had been in the previous shot. I am not going into specifics because those were covered by other reviewers, and I pretty much agree with everything they said. I can only add that I asked myself many times, "How did that happen?"

I think I would have walked out had I seen this in a movie theater, but since I watched it streaming at home, I powered through it, hoping it would get better, which it didn't. I gave it a 2 because it already had so many 1's and I gave it an extra point for effort. I applauded their effort, but not their execution.

I thought that Smoky and the Bandit 2 and 3 were bad. They are masterpieces compared to this. This film is an insult to the cast, crew, fans of Smoky and the Bandit. A crowd funding campaign turned into a paid dream for John Schneider. I've worked with him on other films and he takes most of the money from low budget projects. Super nice guy but greedy and arrogant. This movie looks like it was shot on a 1997 consumer camcorder. The actors are most likely aspiring actors that paid for their roles. It attempts to be funny but it's not. I paid to support this project and am embarrassed as I really had high hopes but it is truly an embarrassment and an insult to fans of Smoky and the Bandit and Dukes of Hazzard.

My dad was super excited for this run off, there were some good parts and some funny moments/ characters but it's like it was on a 5$ budget. Everything just was subpar, and I guess that's just how it is. I'm glad some people enjoyed it however I really do wish they did a better job when it is supposed to be a modern runoff of a fav classic. It felt like Disney doing a poor live action of an old fan fav.

Yeah it's a low budget. But it's fun. And it is like the Smokey and the Bandit version of Not Another Teen Movie.

It has something from almost every classic car / truck movie that has been made in it. Every scene has either something in the background or in the script that is directly related to another show. The fun part is seeing what you find. From My Cousin Vinny to Beverly Hillsbillies it's all in it. You need to pay attention, and make sure you got your ears on or you're going to miss them.

Test your movie and show knowledge by seeing how much you can find.

Most of the movie was filmed on the stars ranch, so yeah don't sweater the movie because of its budget, it wasn't made in Hollywood.

I grew up with the Bandit and Dukes of Hazzard, so I am the target market for a film like this - and there's some really good stuff here! But unfortunately I think the low budget created obstacles that just could not be overcome.

First, the good: The pace of this film is really good, it moves along and never drags. There are some editing issues which I'll get to, but the filmmakers were clearly very capable in a larger sense, which is so important, particularly for this genre.

Great performances across the board. Schneider (who stars, wrote and directed) is a fine actor. His dramatic performances show us he can hold his own, and in lighter fare like this, his charisma shines through. The supporting cast is in my opinion uniformly good, too. Robinson, as the bride, hits all the right notes. Tyrus, as the Sherrif, was delightful. What he lacks in acting experience he more than makes up for in presence, and as a result I loved every minute that he was on screen.

There were some nice stunts here. One car is jumped, another is rolled, and a bunch are dunked into rivers and swamps. They even include the famous Bandit stunt where the roof of the police car is torn off - that was pretty ambitious for such a small film!

I love the indie nature of this film, and I have a tonne of respect for Schneider for setting up John Schneider Studios to make small-scale films of a more personal nature. While I don't agree at all with his politics he shares on YouTube, I can see he is a decent man who is putting his money where his mouth is. I really do respect him as an artist. Everyone should check out his other films (they are criminally under-rated by users on IMDB for some reason, whereas I feel this film is rated too highly - but hey, this is just my opinion).

Now the not-so-good: Road trip / car chase movies are tough to do cheaply. We can see that a lot of the budget for this one went into the car stunts/wrecks, and these scenes are all done pretty well. However, the stuff in between has two problems: First, there is not enough coverage shot of the cars actually on the road, resulting in some very confusing and disorienting editing. I suspect this was due to the editor just not having enough footage to piece the scenes together in a better way.

All of the shots in the interior of the vehicles were done using a green screen, and it is very obvious. It would have been less distracting if there was better continuity when the camera switched from driver to passenger, and an entirely different topography is visible on the other side of the road! When I compare these scenes to, say, "Anderson Bench" (also written and directed by Schneider), which had some similar scenes but was shot on location, it looks awful in comparison. I know that much of this film is dialogue-heavy, and the vehicles are the main locations, so I am sure green-screen made economic sense.

These budget-related sacrifices unfortunately will mar this film as amateurish, and unfortunately for a film in this genre I don't think it could have been avoided. However, my biggest complaint could have been: The story here spends too much energy getting the set pieces of the original Bandit in place that it misses the mark on character development. He don't see the bond between Schneider's Duke and Robinson's Fred really happen like it did with Bandit and Carrie in the original. There is one brief scene that hints that maybe that was going to happen (off camera?), but while they have lots of dialogue together in the car, it doesn't drive their relationship forward very well. The actors share some charisma with one another, so I would have preferred some space for that. There are other scenes, including a bar fight, that don't lead anywhere, that could have been sacrificed instead.

It's a decent tribute to Bandit, with enough of a modern twist to make it just different enough that it's not a remake - and there are enough nods to the original, and to the Dukes of Hazzard, to make any fan smile. This is obvious by its high rating on IMDB in comparison to Schneider's other films - this movie has a lot of nostalgia behind it, and that's not a bad thing.

But as a film on its own merits it has some serious flaws. Still, I look forward to seeing what John Schneider Studios will make next, as the world needs more creative independent films. And you know what they say, if you don't fail sometimes, it means you're not trying enough new things.