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Unfortunately for Bandit, the jilted groom is none other than the dim-witted son of the legendarily round Sheriff Buford T. Justice (a very sweaty Jackie Gleason), whose Texas size outrage at Carrie is exceeded only by his immediate hatred for Bandit. In fact, Justice becomes so obsessed with apprehending Bandit that he more or less forgets about his son’s honor altogether. What he doesn’t forget is how to play the part of celebrity lawman, so as soon as he starts to swing his badge around, every state patrolman within 500 miles is looking for the same black Trans Am. This is where being a smart-ass truck driver with a CB radio and having lots of smart-ass, truck driving friends comes in very handy. Unlikely to win a 1,200-mile-long high speed chase with a hundred cops, Bandit and his handpicked network of blue collar cohorts even the odds on the Citizens Band.

And...that’s kind of it. Smokey and the Bandit is just a hair over 90 minutes, and the majority of that brisk run time is more or less a live action Roadrunner cartoon with cops, fast little cars, big noisy trucks and about 175 gratuitous shots of Sally Fields’ ass. There's never a dull moment, but always very little actually going on. The beer kind of gets forgotten amid the car chases, Bandit seems oblivious to what the hell Carrie's deal is, or why Justice is so interested in him, and the story doesn't keep very good track of where everyone is geographically, or how much time has gone by at any given point. And I love how the police seem to completely give up chasing Bandit every time they lose sight of him. There's a lot of cartoon logic going on here but I feel like that's okay, since I don't think there are any illusions about what kind of film this is.

After all, a complete absence of logic is precisely what makes Roadrunner cartoons funny, and the formula works the same way here. Director/writer Hal Needham was a former stunt man, so naturally he wrote a story light on plot and heavy on car crashes. He was also a close friend of Reynolds, so it's no surprise that Smokey and the Bandit is less a movie than a highly concentrated Burt Reynolds Delivery System, specifically designed to pipe as much of the man’s Mustachioed Machismo directly into your brain as possible. The very first time Bandit outwits a state trooper simply by driving over a median and parking behind a bank, Reynolds pulls the car up to the camera, mugs briefly, and speeds off. That is Maximum Burt, people. And if you’re not on board at this point, you never will be.

Reynolds and Field famously got into each other on the set of this movie, and it occurs to me about halfway through Smokey and the Bandit that what we’re seeing here is their first date, where they made out in a Trans Am at a hundred miles an hour while Jackie Gleason chases them down in half a car, comically shaking his fist and being extremely unpleasant with African-Americans. I can forgive it being a little Looney Tunes because that’s precisely what makes it so much fun. Sally and Burt trying not to hump on camera while every police car in America crashes around them is just icing on the cake. And by the power of the Class XII Porn Star Moustache, for 96 minutes, Burt Reynolds truly is a living God.

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