It was during the sequence in which a bunch of funny Ku Klux Klansmen running riding in a flatbed truck attack a pickup driven by a pair of black farmers, the younger of whom is shown to be proud and therefore stupid. that Smokey and the Bandit – Part 3 became the first film which I was reviewing upon which I walked out. Silly me, I guess; considering the sort of white supremacist, militaristic goons currently in power in Washington, I shouldn’t be shocked that any form of vile, socially retarded “humor” can make it into a film these days. Nonetheless, I’d seen enough to form an opinion and couldn’t justify allowing the cretinous yahoos behind this film to waste anymore of my time. Director Dick Lowry and scenarists Stuart Birnbaum and David Dasheu’s idea of a good time is so crude, they probably think Caveman was a comedy of manners. The comedy, which is the framing device for running cars through a bunch of things in slow motion, is desperate – fart jokes, dog shit jokes, ethnic stereotype jokes, scrotum jokes, and when Lowry and company are really stuck, senseless profanity. Lowry, Birnbaum, and Dasheu are really unfortunate they weren’t making movies 45 years ago; they could have done real well for themselves making two-reel comedies for Joseph Goebbels.
This article appears in August 19 • 1983 (Cover).