|
"Everything's okey-dokey in the Okefenokee," goes the anthem of the rascal who "grew up eatin' rattlesnake meat, drinkin' homemade brew." Mike Douglas as a harried politico announces the flavor of hillbilly vaudeville, promptly dilated with a slapstick chase across the bayou. (Stunts coordinator Hal Needham shows his hand with a slow-motion gag of a motorboat leaping through a shack.) Burt Reynolds as the eponymous moonshiner is barely out of the clink and again forcibly enlisted to go undercover, Jack Weston as the federal agent from Brooklyn sticks out "like a bagel in a bucket of grits." Their target is the flashy racketeer whose specialty is torching businesses that refuse to pay for protection, Ritchie's Prime Cut figures in the sideline of teen prostitution, Jerry Reed luxuriates in the part like a malevolent rooster. "Sometimes my vocabulary just ain't adequate to describe the... beauty and the grandeur of it all." Reynolds keys his direction to his persona, all easygoing savoir-faire until the jocular environment turns sinister and all bets are off. Playing hard to get with a TV snoop (Lauren Hutton), he walks away until she whistles at him through gapped teeth. "Can I buy you a drink?" "Is a pig's ass pork?" The splashy filming is spacious enough for a Degas bordello amid Georgia sweat, an oceanic vista consumed by moonlight, a ribald Dub Taylor joke. William Engesser is the gigantic minion who drives with his noggin sticking out of the sunroof, Alice Ghostley is the cat lady who savors the thrill of breaking into a courthouse. Above all, there's the star's self-mocking awareness of how outdated his lazy charm can be: "I should have been around when not having any style was in style." The ending's vein of romantic melancholia blooms in Sharky's Machine. With Burton Gilliam, John Steadman, Lori Futch, and Stephanie Burchfield.
--- Fernando F. Croce |