Smokey and the Bandit

Sunday afternoon I went to see the 1977 movie Smokey and the Bandit on the big screen thanks to the free tickets I won from Classic Movie Hub.  I actually remember watching it on the big screen when I was a kid, fueling an obsession with my Dad's CB radio (his handle was Grapevine) and warning fellow motorists about the smokeys on the highway.  It was so much fun to see it again!  The premise of this movie is that a wealthy Texas businessman (Pat McCormick) and his son (Paul Williams) want to serve Coors beer at one of their events in Georgia but it is illegal to sell it east of the Mississippi River.  They offer trucker Bo "Bandit" Darville (Burt Reynolds) $80,000 to haul 400 cases of Coors from Texas back to Georgia in 28 hours.  He accepts the challenge and recruits his partner Cledus "Snowman" Snow (Jerry Reid) to drive the truck while he drives the "blocker" (a sweet black Trans Am) to divert attention away from the truck.  On the way back to Georgia, Bandit stops to pick up a runaway bride (Sally Field) and, in doing so, he attracts the attention of Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), a sheriff in Texas and the father of the groom, who pursues him all the way to Georgia.  There are epic car chases and crashes as Justice's police cruiser gets more and more banged up.  This movie is incredibly dated (with hilarious costumes and hairstyles from the 1970s) and the acting is a bit over-the-top, but I thought it was an absolute hoot and I enjoyed hearing all of the CB jargon from my youth.  I laughed out loud so many times (at just about everything Jackie Gleason said) as did everyone in the theater.  It is being screened for its 40th Anniversary in select theaters as part of the TCM Big Screen Classics series and I recommend it to anyone who remembers it fondly.