SMOKEY & THE BANDIT 3

Smokey & The Bandit 3 was the third and final installment to the all-time redneck/gool ole boy "classic" Smokey & The Bandit, which is the film known for making Burt Reynolds a household name (which is, of course, a good or bad thing depending on however you look at it!). Burt Reynolds is noticeably (or maybe NOT so noticeably depending again on how you look at it!) absent from the film save for a five-minute cameo towards the end. Instead, this film features Smokey's sidekick Snowman (played by country crooner/guitar picker the late Jerry Reed) as the lead character. The plot is pretty much the same as the other two Smokey films: The old guy and the dwarf guy hire Reed to transport a shark--not a real one, of course--rather than the "real" Bandit since they find him a bit too egotistical. (Burt Reynolds egotistical? Nah, can't be!) And, like Burt's Smokey did in the original film with Sally Field (?), Jerry picks up a runaway gal named "Dusty Trails" (played by Colleen Camp) along the way. (And, unlike Sally Field in the first two films, Colleen Camp decidedly shows a bit more skin as she wears a rather skimpy cowgirl outfit and we get a clearly unobscured upskirt view of Colleen. Sally, take note!) And, of course, Jackie Gleason's hilariously all-time-favorite character Sheriff Buford T. Justice pursues the psuedo-Bandit believing he's the real one. And--of course!--loads of utter hilarity ensues, including my all-time-favorite scene in the flick when Buford and his ever-so-bumbling deputy son--whom Field runs away from in the first two films and who, of course, makes Barney Fife look like Dirty Harry!--stumble upon a nudist camp where they meet the ultra hot Veronica Gamba, who also just happened to be Playboy's Playmate of the Month in their November 1983 issue (that I wound up paying about twenty bucks for as a back issue I was so smitten with her, but I digress). And, yes, we get to take a gander at Veronica's bodacious ta-tas in the film (even though the film was rated PG or PG-13, I can't remember which). And, yes, the extra nudity is the reason WHY I'm reviewing this particular Smokey film rather than the first two (though I will say that, while I am somewhat a "fan" of the first one, I thought the second one sucked canal water!). Favorite line from the film from Gleason's character Buford (while he and his son are, uh-hum, visiting a whorehouse): "My groin! You're grinding my groin!" A sidenote: One thing I couldn't quite fathom about the first two Smokey films is, if Burt Reynolds was such a "stud" and all as the title character, then why the hell couldn't he get a HOTTER piece of tail than Sally Field? No offense to Sally Field, who's, um, sexy in a "vanilla" Sandra Bullock kind of way, but this is just as perplexing as the two supernatural D-Bags fighting over Kristen Stewart (who's also "sexy" in a weird sort of way) in those sappy-crappy Twilight flicks. But, then again, Burt Reynolds DID end up marrying (and then, of course, divorcing) Loni Anderson--who was regarded as a sort of Pamela Anderson of her day--so that COULD explain why he didn't demand a hotter leading lady (again, no offense, Sally!). You think?