Have you ever heard the phrase, “Let us address the elephant in the room?”  Smokey and the Bandit II (1980) is that elephant, and not just because there is a literal pachyderm in the film.  Before continuing, I am not going to do this like the overwhelming majority of my reviews.  There is little that makes sense here, so I am not going to bother with the usual introduction-synopsis-Catholic analysis-conclusion structure.  If the movie deserves any praise, it is from a Faith perspective.  The care our tiresome cast of characters provide for Charlotte (Cora), the circus animal in question, is Franciscan in nature.  We should treat all God’s creations with respect, and aside from making her ride in the trailer towed by the semi-truck with the door’s closed, they give her the kind of nurture she deserves.  This shines through when they give up their quest to get her to Dallas, Texas, for the Republican National Convention (RNC) in order to allow her to have her baby.

If it sounds strange for a movie like Smokey and the Bandit II to feature an elephant birth, then understand that we are just getting started.  If you read my treatment of the first installment in this trilogy, Smokey and the Bandit (1977), you might remember that Bo “The Bandit” Darville (Burt Reynolds) stops to pick up Carrie “Frog” (Sally Field) as she is in the process of jilting Junior Justice (Mike Henry) at the altar.  This prompts the bizarre sequence in that film that has Junior and his father, Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), chasing Bo and Carrie from Texas to Georgia.  Setting aside the jurisdictional problems, at least then our so-called heroes were actually breaking the law.  Such behavior also makes it hard for this Catholic to root for Bo and company.  In Smokey and the Bandit II, for no discernible reason, Carrie is back to getting married to Junior.  This time, they are in front of the minister in a protestant church dedicated to “assorted saints” when the phone rings.  I have trouble imagining there being such a device that close to a member of the clergy during a service, especially in a Catholic place of worship.  Indeed, whenever a cell audibly goes off during a homily, I have routinely heard priests point this out in a light hearted but pointed manner.  In other words, turn off your phones, or put them on silent!  Yet, the call is answered.  The receiver is handed to Junior, who insists that Carrie speaks to the person on the other end because it is a long-distance dial.  That was a thing in 1980.

The person on the line during that phone call in Smokey and the Banit II is Cledus “The Snowman” Snow (Jerry Reed), Bo’s longtime friend and business partner.  He has been hired by “Big Enos” (Pat McCormick) and “Little Enos” Burdette (Paul Williams), father and son.  Everything about this is odd.  Previously, the Burdettes had been brothers living in Atlanta.  Now the former is dad and running for the governor of Texas.  Did anyone watch the last film before making this one?  Their campaign is off to a bad start, with their opposite dropping manure on them from an airplane, and them responding by dumping red paint from the sky on the competition.  This behavior gets them a reprimand from the current man in office, John Conn (David Huddleston), whom the Burdettes overhear wanting to make a special delivery to the RNC.  Wanting to impress John and get an endorsement, the Burdettes contact Cledus, who then finds Bo.  The legendary Bandit is in sad shape since Carrie left him, whenever that happened, and has been self-medicating with alcohol.  The solution is to get Carrie to come, which, to her credit from a Christian perspective, is a noble thing to do.  However, her initial motivations are mercenary, being offered $50,000 for her services.  It is a quid pro quo situation, which is not how God’s love and mercy work.  He gives freely, and this is kind of the direction in which her heart goes.  The change of heart comes in a roughly Christian way, too, being won over by the humble Cora.  She perceives Bo as only caring about the pachyderm because of the money.  Further, she sees his drinking as self-destructive and decides to leave.  That is hard to do to people for whom we have deep feelings, but sometimes it is the right one.  Anyway, when it is all said and done, he comes to find her and says that he now likes himself after agreeing to leave Cora and her baby at a sanctuary.

There are some more driving antics in Smokey and the Bandit II, though the majority of the so-called story is taken up with elephant care.  One or the other separately would have made for a better film, but the two together makes for a broken production.  I guess when you do not take the plot seriously, you can forgive it when hundreds of extra trucks and cop cars materialize in the middle of the desert in the movie’s climactic moment, when Sheriff Justice is trying to stop Bo and Cledus for the last time.  By this point, the Christian acts have been done.  Everything else is nonsense, and therefore not worth your time.