The Dukes of Hazzard (2005)

Just some good ol' boys, never meanin' no harm. Man, I don't know if I would go so far as to say that I loved this show as a kid, but I certainly watched often enough. I'm not old enough to have caught it when it originally aired, but I did see it in syndication. For a while it was on at either five or six pm every afternoon. What did I watch it for? Well, Catherine Bach as Daisy Duke didn't hurt matters, but I honestly wasn't that attracted to her. She seemed old and unhappy. I guess I would be too if I were the only woman on a set full of men, and I always had to look sexy while they were just fat and/or old and/or creepy. Was it the storylines? Wait, there were storylines? Plural? Every episode followed the same formula. 1: Duke boys have some fun. 2: Duke boys get hassled by the man 3: someone uncovers another plot by Boss Hogg 4: Uncle Jesse figures out a way for the boys to use the General Lee and Daisy to use her feminine wiles to thwart Boss Hogg and the police 5: big car chase with at least one amazing jump by the General Lee and at least one police car getting totalled.
Now, towards the end of the series they began to play fast and loose with just how many Duke boys there were, how many friendly deputies there were and just how much of a caricature of their own characters Hogg and Coltrane could be, but that as much proves the rule as anything.
Don't get me wrong - no one twisted my art to watch the show. This was the early and mid eighties, where I was watching the A-Team, Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica. All three shows were just as formulaic and ridiculous as the Dukes of Hazzard. I guess I can count these as guilty pleasures of my youth. Now, I can wish that I had spent that time reading or writing, but I didn't know any better then. I hope that I know better now. I probably don't.
Now, I watch CSI and NCIS and Criminal Minds. Um yeah. Oh wait! I watch a lot of BBC too, like Midsomer Murders...crap it's formulaic and predictable too. All these shows are. Damn it! Not only have I not leanred anything, I can't stop using exclamation points!
I probably shouldn't have watched this movie based upon the above. Just like I shouldn't have watched the A-Team movie, but I actually kind of liked that - it did have Liam Neeson. And this had Willie Nelson, which seemed like a good idea, but what the hell did they do to Uncle Jesse? Making moonshine and being a badassed war vet, I get that, but most of his lines were dumb jokes. I don't understand. Everybody else in the movie did an adequate job. This movie was as much a spoof of the series as it was an homage to it, and Jessica Simpson worked those Daisy Dukes in a way that Catherine Bach never did, not to mention that Hazzard county Georgia seems to be full of hillbilly guys and smokin' hot babes (to borrow from the movie).
I got exactly what I expected. That's obviously not surprising, but it's not necessarily bad, either.