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Dukes of Hazzard

There’s an old saying that, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

Unfortunately, with the current crop of effluence pouring out of Hollywood , this weekly column would be shorter than the list of honorable men currently serving in Congress.

This week, the column would consist of just two short sentences:

The soundtrack for the “Dukes of Hazzard,” featuring plenty of great seventies tunes from groups like Molly Hatchet and AC/DC, was tremendous.

The other is that Jessica Simpson is so incredibly gorgeous that she doesn’t have to act.

And it’s a good thing, because she can’t.

So much for nice things to say.

This movie smelled bad long before the first cameraman was selected, earning the popular nickname “Pukes of Hazzard.”

Once again, the festering garden slugs at Warner Brothers who are basically too lazy to even visit the toilet on a regular basis have scooped up the result of their incontinence and smeared it onto a movie screen.

“The Dukes of Hazzard” was an insipid, tiresome, mindless piece of television trash conceived in the seventies, when “Gilligan’s Island ” was considered intellectually stimulating.

It was a lousy TV show.

Unlike cheese and fine wine, and more like a dead possum by the side of the road, this one only became more rank and vile with the passage of time.

Knowing that this was going to require an immense suspension of reality just to wade through it, nothing short of a lobotomy could have prepared moviegoers for the level of unrealistic antics that wouldn’t make sense even in rural Georgia .

The story line was tired and worn out the first 82 times it was plotted on television, where Boss Hogg (played poorly by Burt “I Must Be REALLY Hard-Up for Money” Reynolds) illegally takes the Dukes’ farm for his nefarious plan to turn it into a coal strip mine, and the Dukes have to find a way to rescue Uncle Jesse, win the big race, and still get to the courthouse in time to foil the plan.

Yawn.

Somehow, the Dukes manage to turn an environmental issue into a protracted series of car chases, including an unlikely run from the law in Atlanta .

(Have you ever been to Atlanta ?  Their traffic jams have traffic jams.  The Phantom has a friend with tickets to the synchronized swimming event who is STILL stuck on the interstate trying to reach the 1996 Olympics venue.)

In fact, the idea of racing through Atlanta traffic is so preposterous, director Jay Chandrasekhar (yeah, sounds like a Southerner) filmed much of this sequence in New Orleans .

Now for the acting.

You know you’re in trouble when the most talented thespian in the cast is Willie Nelson, playing the part of Uncle Jesse.

Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott, playing Luke and Bo Duke (it doesn’t matter which was playing which, they both blew chunks), looked uncomfortable throughout the movie.

The Phantom has seen postcards that weren’t as one-dimensional as these two.

Then you have Jessica Simpson, blessed with one of the most beautiful faces on the planet.

She would have been more at home in a movie about ghosts, because her lame “Southern accent” disappeared more often than a playful poltergeist, and her acting was as transparent and devoid of substance as any apparition.

And it’s doubly tragic when you consider her portrayal of Daisy Duke only required her to repeatedly show off her “assets,” a feat she still managed to fumble by actually opening her mouth.

Everything except the music was so abominable that Warner Brothers should get a citation from the health inspectors in every city where this film was shown for allowing raw sewage to go untreated.

This one joins its brethren “Starsky and Hutch” as one of the worst movies The Phantom has ever been forced to suffer through.

Please, for the love of Cecil B. DeMille, don’t waste your money on this lousy clip of celluloid.

The Phantom grades this film zero out of four masks.  (Even the soundtrack couldn’t save it.)

“Dukes of Hazzard” is rated PG-13 due to excessive Jessica Simpson cleavage, unnecessary and offensive glorification of marijuana (can you actually get Willie Nelson to show up somewhere WITHOUT the promise of pot?), and the gory, stomach-wrenching injuries inflicted on too many beautiful, innocent vintage automobiles.

Next week:  Skeleton Key

(Through Thursday, September 1, 2005)