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Gator McClusky is back to punch dudes and kiss ladies. This time he's gotta bust his buddy Roy from the first movie. Oh that's not Roy? That's Jerry Reed? Huh.

So as discussed the primary problem with the first film, White Lightning, is its tonally all over the place. Its a goofy car chase movie. Its a murder revenge against a corrupt elected official. Its a sexy time in the swamp. Gator doesn't suffer from that. Thematically, its much more focused. Jerry Reed's Bama McCall is a bit of a goofy villain more in line with James Bond than a Michael Mann movie. You don't feel too icky about him. He's a low level crook running a protection racket and whooores. He's NOT Ned Beatty who is nuts and murders college kids for political dissent. He just likes doing the crimes. That's the level of villain you want for a goofy car chase movie, where the ladies love the handsome guy and cats go on burglaries.

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Burt Reynolds faces off against Ned Beatty as the most frightening and real villain one can imagine. His method of vengeance? Crashing cars and banging ladies!

White Lightning is a cornerstone of what would happen for the rest of the 70's. Mostly Burt Reynolds in cars and doing his silly laugh. But really its influence goes so much farther than that. It sprinkles into trucking movies, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, Walking Tall, and anything that involves cars and bayous moving forward. Some of that is Hal Needham's stunt work, some of it is Burt's charm, but really it seems like it was just the natural filmic direction that matched the post-Civil-Rights-Movement and late Vietnam war culture of America.

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A believe it or not commercial success, but working more like a confused mess that doesn't know who they want watching it, Burt Reynolds teams up with a precocious scamp to take down a drug ring - because early 90's.

Talk about 90's stereotypes and whatever rules to life. Of course, the kid doesn't have parents - it's 1993! Of course the cops cave to his demands to be a cop despite being 10 - it's 1993! Of course, Burt Reynolds drives over everyone's yards without consequences - its 1993! Pop Rocks for a drug prop? You betcha its 1993!

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We setup our tribute to the dearly missed Burt Reynolds with an examination of his first Razzie nomination as "bored actor who doesn't want to be in the same film as Liza Minnelli". It's like Sharky's Machine meets A Star is Born. Does that work for a bad movie "do"?

Let's get straight to the bad - the big bad is Liza. She's insufferable. It's not completely her fault as the script calls for the most annoying person ever as the "love interest" for hunky Burt - because that's how all cop movies should work right? So she is supposed to play an annoying person and she does that in spades or jazz hands or sea-urchin hair cuts. Whatever. It's awful and you can't put someone who is like nails on the chalkboard into a movie even if the role calls for it. You can't annoy your audience for 2 hours. Ugh.