The Dukes of Hazzard

Once the largely inept and uncouth cast shuts the heck up (i.e., stops trying to act) and starts burnin' rubber and wreckin' cars, there's some good ol' fun to be had in this slipshod TV rehash. But the first hour of the movie is a punishing parade of protracted establishing scenes, colorless characters, and painful performances that make the picture's amusingly harebrained 1980s inspiration look like sophisticated action-comedy by comparison. Seann William Scott (Stiffler from the American Pie trilogy) and Johnny Knoxville (MTV's Jackass) play the once-charming (on TV) moonshine-running country cousins Bo and Luke Duke as the Appalachian equivalent of drunken frat boys, while candy-pop professional celebrity Jessica Simpson is a catastrophe as sexpot Daisy Duke, delivering fumbled dialogue with a fake Georgia drawl from her Barbie-doll mouth. In the porous, sloppy, slapped-together plot (as inane as the show ever was, and lathered up with PG-13 vulgarity), the Dukes must save Hazzard County from being strip-mined, while also winning an off-road rally in their bright orange, Confederate-flag emblazoned, thunder-engined, nearly indestructible 1969 Dodge Charger. The energetic, absurd, over-the-top race and chase scenes are the only things saving the movie from becoming a total wreck. Not a necessary purchase. [Note: Available in either PG-13 full screen or unrated widescreen or full screen versions, DVD extras on the unrated edition include additional scenes (26 minutes of PG-13 rated and 4 minutes of unrated), a 15-minute “The Hazards of Dukes” behind-the-scenes featurette, bloopers (roughly 11 minutes worth), “Daisy Dukes: The Short Short Shorts” (5 min.), “The General Lee Lives” about the famed car (5 min.), “How to Launch a Muscle Car 175 feet in 4 Seconds” (5 min.), the music video “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'” performed by costar Jessica Simpson, and trailers. Bottom line: a so-so extras package for a disappointing film.] (R. Blackwelder)