Smokey and the Bandit 3 - Luckily this was the last

‘Smokey and the Bandit.’ In case you didn’t know (and who the hell starts watching a film series on ‘Part III?’) was about a car racer, aka ‘Bandit’ helping his tracker mate ‘Snowman’ to get their load across America, while constantly being pursued by a relentless policeman, ‘Smokey.’

Therefore, you’d expect part III would be along those lines.  The film’s only just over an hour and twenty minutes and for the first half an hour, we don’t see the ‘Bandit.’ That part of the film should just be called ‘Smokey and the.’ Then the Bandit enters.  Only he doesn’t.  Burt Reynolds didn’t come back to play the titular role for the third instalment.  Instead, the trucker ‘Snowman’ takes on his role of car driver.

Does he pull it off?  Not really.  He tries, but it’s pretty hard to watch.  First of all he’s not – and never will be – Burt Reynolds.  He can’t really bring anything new to the role.  Secondly, in terms of character development, the character of Snowman completely changes from what we’ve gotten used to from the first two outings.  For a moment I even thought it was a different actor playing him!
Then Snowman (or maybe ‘Bandit’ now?) gets a girl/partner to drag along.  It seems totally forced, simply copying the same plot device used in the first film.

However, worst of all, is that there’s nothing new here to see.  Seriously, you should try this, if you’re watching Part III on DVD, just skip a couple of chapters for the hell of it.  You won’t miss anything and you’ll completely be able to work out what’s happened.  Basically, in DVD terms, every ‘chapter’ represents a time where Smokey nearly catches Bandit, but he gets away.  Each time Smokey’s car gets trashed, but somehow still manages to carry on then he moans at his long-suffering son (who he’s dragged along for no real reason).

If you haven’t actually seen the first two and happen to stumble onto this one, I’m not saying you won’t smile the odd time.  There are moments of fun, but, if I want fun, thrills, good characters (played by the right actors!) and originality, I’ll just watch the first one thank you.

4/10 You can watch this film while you're doing the ironing (you'll still get the general gist of it)