THE MOVIE

I'm sure most people out there have seen or at least heard of Smokey And The Bandit. It was a pretty big hit in its day, starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field and Jackie Gleason. It is one of those films that were created in the 70's, survived all the way through the 80's, and was pretty much buried come 1990. Dumb but fun.

The basic plot is as follows. The "Bandit" (a cool-as-ever Burt Reynolds!) is bribed to forfeit the trucky's rodeo, and cargo a truckload of beer from one side of America to the other for a sum of $80,00. What follows is a heap of crap one-liners, and some decent car-chasing action. I know there's people out there that still like this film, and I know it's not meant to be anything more than dumb fun, but I cannot give it any more than 2 stars. The cast is good, and the action is OK, but the comedy is not up to scratch. I find these films to be barely watchable these days - even if I once taped it off TV (I was only a kid!). The best thing I can say about the film is that it is harmless dumb fun.

If you have never seen the film before, it's maybe worth a watch - if only to see Burt Reynolds's fly's eyes, but don't blame me if you don't like it. As I find it hard to recommend this film to any newcomer, any fan will be more than satisfied with this DVD edition.

THE TRANSFER

Video:

Smokey And The Bandit is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and is not anamorphically enhanced. The thing about this is that the American release of Smokey is a cropped 1.85:1 letterbox version of this open matte full-screen presentation. That means that the top and bottom segments show more in this version than the cropped version. Personally, I always prefer the widescreen look as opposed to full screen as it's more cinematic - even if the top and bottom of frame are cropped. I just find it hard to watch a film in full screen.

As far as the quality of this transfer goes, it's pretty good actually. A tad dirty and soft, the image comes across better than expected. Colours and black levels are quite strong for it's age (1977), and no edge artifacts were obvious. Not too bad - once you get past the full-frame thing.

Audio:

The Audio is presented in English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono. Suffering from not receiving a 5.1 soundtrack, the audio from the film is represented decently, but nothing VHS could provide. Being a mono track, surrounds were non-existent, and the LFE was not called into play - as expected. Dialogue was always clear, and never distorted. And there were no audio sync problems evident. This area of the disc did not surprise me at all, and is nothing worth showing your friends.

THE EXTRAS

The film's Trailer, which runs for 2 and a half minutes.

SUMMARY

I've made it obvious that I am not a great fan of the film - although I know it still has its fans. The DVD is all you'd expect for the film, with a decent presentation, but nothing more than that.