By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
What if you could have a racing movie with all the thrills and speed you crave along with hilarious characters you love? As it turns out, the perfect example of such a film also includes a secret weapon: Burt Reynolds, better known around here as the man, the myth, and the mustache. He headlines Smokey and the Bandit, and this high-octane, lowbrow classic is now streaming on Netflix.
Smokey and the Bandit sets the bar high for crazy Netflix plots: after all, the story begins when a wealthy man decides to hire a bootlegger who can transport hundreds of cases of Coors beer (hey, wealth can’t buy taste) from Texarkana to Atlanta in only 28 hours. He ends up hiring Bandit, an ace driver who uses his Pontiac Trans Am to keep the heat off his buddy’s truck full of brews. But the heat won’t go away thanks to a persistent sheriff who will stop at nothing to see these bootleggers behind bars.
Watching Smokey and the Bandit on Netflix lets you enjoy some career-best work from truly legendary actors, including Burt Reynolds (best known outside of this film for Boogie Nights and The Cannonball Run, another racing classic). It also stars Jerry Reed, best known outside of Smokey and the Bandit for its first sequel and his part in the Adam Sander hit The Waterboy. Meanwhile, the film’s charming love interest is played by Sally Field, an actor best known for Lincoln and Steel Magnolias.
Decades before Smokey and the Bandit landed on Netflix, this film won over an entire generation of moviegoers, earning $127 million against a budget of $4.3 million. This was enough profit for Universal Pictures to greenlight two sequels, though neither matches the killer quality of the original movie. The second film (Smokey and the Bandit II) is a decent but still disappointing sequel, and the third film (Smokey and the Bandit Part 3) might as well be a cinematic war crime.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Smokey and the Bandit has a critical score of 72 percent. In general, critics noted that while the movie is a bit dumb, it keeps things entertaining through a steady stream of car wrecks and sheer fun courtesy of the charismatic cast. And the film has an audience score of 85 percent, indicating that mainstream audiences had even more fun with this redneck racing classic than critics did.
The critics are mostly right: Smokey and the Bandit is a delightfully dumb film, even by the standards of Netflix comedies. But the important part is that it’s dumb fun, and this movie’s sheer charm helped it earn a rightful place in the canon of Hollywood classics. This is your chance to enjoy one of the breeziest and brassiest films ever made while experiencing something truly special: Burt Reynolds in his prime.
Will you find Smokey and the Bandit as criminally good as we did when you watch it on Netflix, or is this the kind of film you’d rather report to Johnny Law? Like wondering if you could transport thousands of beers to Atlanta in 28 hours, you won’t know until you try it for yourself. Be warned, though: by the time the credits roll, you’re going to want to drive faster than you ever have before.
