The Dukes of Hazzard (2005)

Right, I'm going to hold my hands up before we go any further: this is a four-and-a-half star review of The Dukes of Hazzard. Yes, that one. The 2005 one with the short shorts and the flying muscle car and the jokes that would make a GCSE drama teacher wince. I know how it looks. I don't care. Because from the second the General Lee left the ground for the first time, I had a grin plastered across my face that nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to shift.

Let me be straight with you about the craft side of things. If I were marking this on screenplay depth, character development, narrative originality, or any of the things that tend to make a film genuinely good, I'd be sitting somewhere around the 2.5 mark. It's dumb. It's loud. The jokes creak. Some of the humour has aged about as gracefully as a pair of stonewash jeans left out in the rain. I am aware of all of this, and I am awarding it four and a half stars anyway, because sometimes a film isn't about craft. Sometimes it's about pure, uncut, grinning experience.

Johnny Knoxville as Luke Duke and Seann William Scott as Bo Duke is, genuinely, inspired casting for exactly this level of glorious absurdity. You need two lads who feel like they'd drive a bright orange car into a barn and walk out laughing, and that's precisely what you get. Knoxville especially, coming off the back of the Jackass era (and if you want more of that chaotic energy, I had a brilliant time with Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (2013)), brings this total commitment to the chaos that makes it all sing. Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke might not be giving you a BAFTA-worthy performance, but she commits, and in a film like this, commitment is everything. And then there's Burt Reynolds as Boss Hogg. The man is comfort food in human form. Every scene he's in feels like being handed a warm plate of something you shouldn't be eating but absolutely needed.

The whole film operates on outlaw energy and Southern charm, and it wears both loud and proud. It's not trying to be anything other than what it is: a live-action cartoon, a hillbilly holiday, a feature-length excuse to watch a beautiful car do things no car should be able to do. And for most of the runtime, that's enough. It breezes along on goodwill and silliness, and you let it, because the alternative is taking it seriously, and life's too short for that.

But then comes the last third. And this is where I need you to hear me out, because this is why the car movie reputation is criminally underrated. It's an extended, full-throttle, barnstorming car chase that just doesn't stop. Over fields, through towns, across ramps, under bridges. The General Lee flying, surviving things that would turn any ordinary vehicle into scrap metal, looking impossibly good doing all of it. These are real cars. Real jumps. Real crashes. Real stunts. As someone who loves muscle cars and automotive spectacle, this stretch is about as joyful as it gets. It belongs in the conversation with the great car chase sequences, even if the film around it would never be invited to the same dinner party.

Critics dismissed this one, and I get it. On paper it's indefensible. But The Dukes of Hazzard is the kind of film you watch on a warm summer night with your mates, something cold in your hand, expectations left outside the door. It knows exactly what it is. It knows exactly who it's for. And it delivers that thing with maximum enthusiasm and zero apology.

Four and a half stars. Underrated as a car movie. Underrated as a good time. If backroads chaos and a flying muscle car sounds like your idea of a Saturday night well spent, get it on. Yeeeehaaaawww.

Rating: ★★★½  | Year: 2005  | Watched: 2025-10-11

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Watch in the UK
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Related on Movies With Macca

More with Johnny Knoxville: Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (2013) · Skiptrace (2016) · The Ringer (2005) · Walking Tall (2004)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)