Reception
Film critic Leonard Maltin gave the film a good rating (3 stars out of a possible 4) and characterized it as "About as subtle as The Three Stooges, but a classic compared to the sequels and countless rip-offs which followed."
Gene Siskel, in his review in the Chicago Tribune, gave the film two stars and complained that the film failed to let the audience in on when the clock started on the beer run thus removing suspense regarding how long they had to go throughout the film. He also pointed out that Bandit is never made aware of Frog's leaving Junior at the altar.
The film's editors, Walter Hannemann and Angelo Ross, were nominated for the Academy Award. It currently holds a 77% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
American Film Institute Lists
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
- Bandit (Bo Darville) – Nominated Hero
Read more about this topic: Smokey And The Bandit
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)