Hazzardous Waste

Duke family gathering: from left, Daisy Duke (Jessica Simpson), Luke Duke (Johnny Knoxville) and Bo Duke (Seann William Scott) in The Dukes of Hazzard. Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

Nobody goes to the movies to watch television. There’s more than enough TV on TV. And if, in fact, you don’t think there’s enough TV on TV, you can rent or buy your favourite TV shows as soon as they’re gussied up and repackaged for DVD release. Then you can watch and re-watch these shows when you want, in the comfort of your own home, on your own gigantic flat-screen TV. Despite the recent glut of reality television, mainstream American TV has gotten much better over the last twenty years. Mainstream American cinema, on the other hand, seems to have lost its way.

One big reason is that the major studios are under the mistaken assumption that audiences want to watch bad television on the big screen. Hollywood continues to adapt the most execrable and banal hits of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s — The Brady Bunch, Starsky and Hutch, Lost in Space, The Beverly Hillbillies, Wild Wild West — and rewards viewers with only the slightest buzz of nostalgia. Fond childhood memories notwithstanding, the studios, writers and directors know these shows were lousy, and treat them accordingly. The remakes typically mock their very origins, mangling an original premise or caricaturing the cast. What’s more, studios foist these films on an indifferent demographic that already enjoys a better, more nuanced pop culture of its own, and that was likely not even born when the original programs graced the airwaves. But such is the cynical condescension of studio execs that they think fitting current celebrities in yesterday’s vehicle will result in solid box-office returns.

This, of course, is the strategy behind casting Johnny Knoxville and Jessica Simpson in The Dukes of Hazzard. Both “actors” have gigantic fan bases, thanks to the popularity of their own TV shows: Knoxville’s real-life stunt show Jackass and Simpson’s The Newlyweds, a chronicle of her marriage to fellow singer Nick Lachey. I’m no fan of the original Dukes of Hazzard — I thought it was sophomoric before I even knew how to spell the word, and the iconic car, the General Lee, means squat to me — but I am a fan of Knoxville and Simpson. Both have managed to create fascinating characters while making two of the genre-defining hits of reality TV. To me, anyway, both Jackass and Newlyweds have revealed their surprisingly canny acting ability. In Dukes, Knoxville plays carefree daredevil Luke Duke and Simpson the curvy and cunning Daisy Duke, roles that parody the very personas that made them famous; whatever thespian skill Knoxville and Simpson have is squandered on self-defeating satire. For her part, Simpson seems completely baffled — as awed, perhaps, by her newly toned, grotesquely tanned body as the men are.

The film Dukes are much like their television kin (originally played by John Schneider and Tom Wopat): good ol’ boys with a love for ladies, cars and misadventure. Running moonshine for their Uncle Jessie (Willie Nelson), Luke and Bo (Seann William Scott) continually run afoul of both the law and county commissioner Boss Hogg (a surprisingly slim though still slimy Burt Reynolds). But when they discover Hogg has a plan to turn Hazzard County into a strip mine, the boys’ sense of civic duty supersedes even their love of fun. Well, not quite; in The Dukes of Hazzard, being environmentally conscious doesn’t rule out using the General Lee to do donuts in downtown Atlanta.

Dukes the TV show was never art, but the movie barely qualifies as entertainment. In the Dukes’ universe, plot never drove much of anything, and here again it acts only as a chassis on which to hang a succession of car chases. But in the movie, those action sequences are weirdly pedestrian and inert — there’s never a whiff of authentic danger (as in Jackass) or low-wattage charm (as in the original show). The stunts seem, well, stunted, and Knoxville’s strained giggle is as forced as the fun — no matter how many AC/DC songs director Jay Chandrasekhar piles on top. Chandrasekhar, responsible for such movies as Super Troopers and Club Dread, is a disciple of the Zucker brothers (Airplane!, Top Secret!) school of comedy. But the Zuckers kept things inventive and fast, packing their scenes with so many dumb jokes that they began to seem smart. The Dukes of Hazzard, on the other hand, works on a ratio of one joke for every scene in which Simpson strips down to her bikini. That adds up to a paltry three gags in ninety minutes.

"Ever read Sartre?": Daisy pays a visit to Deputy Enos Strate (Michael Weston). Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

Chandrasekhar is most comfortable when he takes the Dukes out of Hazzard and plops them down in the big city. To uncover Boss Hogg’s true intentions, Bo and Luke take some mining samples to an Atlanta college for analysis. Better suited to directing a campus comedy, Chandrasekhar brings the boys in contact with a sorority filled with pot-smoking, panty-clad co-eds; later on, the Dukes run into some black toughs who are less than amused by the Confederate flag emblazoned on the boys’ orange Dodge. These fish-out-of-water moments give Chandrasekhar an opportunity to lampoon the original show’s clichés and doggedly un-PC outlook. Any commentary is quickly sucked out, though, as soon as the Dukes hit the highway for home. The South sighs again.

Why don’t the studios adapt good TV shows from the beginning? Perhaps because the last time that happened — 1992’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me — the resulting film was so unjustly maligned (and bombed so badly) that it was five years before David Lynch made another. (I am still holding out hope for the big-screen retrofit of Amy Sedaris’s scabrous Comedy Central hit Strangers With Candy, out this fall.) The big screen used to mean the big leagues. But for every Brad Bird — the former Simpsons writer who directed the animated film hit The Incredibles — there’s a David Chase (The Sopranos), a Mitch Hurwitz (Arrested Development) and a David Milch (Deadwood), who never seem to reach the multiplex. Or maybe they simply don’t want to; the big leagues just don’t seem so big anymore. We’ve all heard that Hollywood box office receipts have plummeted this summer. So far, however, no one seems to be turning off their TV.

The Dukes of Hazzard opens Aug. 5 across Canada.

Jason McBride is a writer and editor based in Toronto.