1 Best Movies To Watch After Cannonball Run II (1984)

Hal Needham's good-old-boy romp is still as silly and dumb and charming as it was nearly a half-century ago. I have spent the last hour or so trying to figure out a way into this piece commemorating the 45th anniversary of Smokey and the Bandit, a goofy exercise in hicksploitation that exceeded all expectations to become one of the biggest hits of 1977. On the one hand, the film is an undeniably puerile conglomeration of noisy car crashes and jokes that were on the retrograde side even back in the day. On the other, it’s a film that’s entertained me mightily over the years and still does.  That said, I would never refer to Smokey and the Bandit as a “guilty pleasure,” because that would suggest that I feel some degree of embarrassment over my admiration for it. That’s simply not true—as dumb as it is, it does have a certain charm that helps move it along while (mostly) overlooking its shortcomings. Continue Reading →