One of my all time favorites.

Absolutely Fantastic

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Bo Duke (Jonathan Bennett) gets arrested in Chickasaw County, GA for creating mayhem with his driving. Four counties over, his cousin Luke Duke (Randy Wayne) is arrested for causing fireworks mayhem. The boys are sent to work for uncle Jesse Duke (Willie Nelson) who is selling his moonshine "medicine". Daisy Duke (April Scott) is an awkward church-going virgin. Rosco P. Coltrane (Harland Williams) is the sheriff in Hazzard County. Boss Hogg (Christopher McDonald) runs the town and actually has a piece of Jesse's business. He is looking to expand and threatening to foreclose on Jesse's farm. At school, Daisy introduces her cousins to Cooter (Joel David Moore) in auto shop class. The boys find a 1969 Dodge Charger on the bottom of a swimming hole and restore it christening it 'The General Lee'.This is a lot of T&A, sometimes bare and plenty in tight outfits. Obviously, the filmmakers know what they're going for. This is a softcore B-movie with whatever scraps they can gather. A prequel to Dukes was always going to be a high hill to jump. This is giving up before they started. None of this is that good. Sadly, none of it is expected to be good. They lured Willie Nelson back and brought out an unfunny version of Harland Williams. The two young new actors lack the charisma to lead. April Scott has her impossibly skinny waist and her Barbie-like figure. The story is a mess and none of it is funny.

In Australia this film went straight to DVD and I must don't waste your time watching this. I wish I could go back in time 90mins as I would have watched something else. This is the so called unrated version.Well I'd hate to see what the original version was. Maybe a bit better than this crap.Hopefully there wont be another movie in the series made.If they do I hope they find better actors to portray the parts.How Willie Nelson signed on for the sequel beats me, Avoid at all costs

"The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning" (** out of ****) explores the origins of the popular CBS-TV series. Specifically, veteran television director Robert Berlinger and freshman scenarist Shane Morris show how cousins Bo and Luke Duke hooked up with each other, met Uncle Jessie, Daisy, and Cooter, and created a lifelong enemy out of Boss Hogg. After the less than spectacular but nevertheless adequate box office performance of the 2005 theatrical feature that toplined Johnny Knoxville as Luke and Seann William Scott as Bo, with Burt Reynolds cast as Boss Hogg, Warner Brothers must have felt that the franchise had enough life left in it to prompt a prequel. Actually, the 2005 comedy served as a prequel, while "The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning" takes us back before the cousins met in the feature film. As Bo and Luke Duke respectively, newcomers Jonathan Bennett of "Mean Girls" and Randy Wayne of ABC-TV's "Sons and Daughters" play them during their teenage years. The superficial but adequate straight-to-video introduction to the Hazzard County hellions generates a modicum of interest for two reasons. First, Shane Morris provides the answers to several questions that "Dukes of Hazzard" completists will appreciate. Second, Willie Nelson graciously reprises his role as Uncle Jessie. Evidently, Warner Brothers either anted up some serious cash or Willie must have felt in a charitable mood. Unquestionably, other than the young actor (Joel Moore of "Dodgeball") who impersonates Cooter, none of the cast is remotely memorable as any of the series characters. Comic actor Christopher MacDonald of "Thelma & Louise" is neither dastardly nor urbane as Boss Hogg, while Harland Williams of "Dumb and Dumber" fares only slightly better as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane. Indeed, Williams is a big improvement over M.C. Gainey in the 2005 feature. Of course, nobody will ever top James Best as the craven lawman.We learn in "The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning" that Luke got in trouble with the law for setting off a fireworks display to show his love for a woman who ignored him while Bo failed his driving license test seven times during which he careened around recklessly every time with the fuzz in hot pursuit. The authorities and the parents decide the best thing for their errant offspring is to pack them off for the summer to Hazzard County where Uncle Jessie plans to work their tails off doing chores around his ranch. The cousins meet Daisy (newcomer April Scott) just after she has taken a vow of abstinence. At this point, Daisy has not donned her trademark cut-off blue jeans. No sooner have the cousins settled into Hazzard County than they run afoul of Boss Hogg and nearly kill his prize hog Dainty. Inexplicably, Hogg keeps Dainty in a pen atop the Boar's Nest. Boss and Jessie are on the outs. Boss demands a greater percentage of Jessie's slim moonshine earnings and eventually decides that he wants Jessie's ranch, too. Naturally, Jessie is not about to part with the ranch that has been in the family for 150 years. This complication prompts youthful Daisy to apply for a job at the Boar's Nest as a waitress, but she still looks like a plain Jane. After she sheds her spectacles, ties her shirt above her belly and packs her booty into a pair of cut-offs, the owner changes his mind. Meanwhile, cousins Bo and Luke decide to help Jessie with his moonshine activities, but this requires that they obtain transportation. While skinny-dipping at a lake, they discover a 1969 Dodge Charger sunk on the bottom and raise it. Cooter helps them refurbish it and paint it orange. Cooter, we learn, has a thing about horns. Remember, he installed the Dixie horn on the General Lee in the 2005 movie. Jessie tells them every car that he ever owned he named after a southern general, so Bo names it the General Lee. When Daisy asks Bo what his favorite number is, he picks the number 01 and our heroine paints it on both the doors. Bo welds his door shut because he says it is cool. We learn why Bo slides off the hood. He claims it is easier than walking around the car to get into it. As the same time, Sheriff Roscoe keeps a weather eye on our heroes and totes around a puppy version of Flash. The boys run rings around the local law enforcement, but they don't perform any acrobatics in the newly christened General Lee until the finale. Some of the one-liners are clever, but the attitude has changed considerably with "The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning" in this Unrated Edition. Unlike the TV series, this prequel features more risqué humor, along the lines of the "Porky's" movie. When the cousins meet Cooter in high school, they take his dune buggy for a ride and smash through the girl's locker room so that dozens of screaming bare breasted babes pursue them. There is also an amusing scene when Boss Hogg's wife Lulu (Sherilyn Fenn of "The Wraith") gets turned on by young Luke and shows him how to stuff a baked turkey. The basting scene is predictable but nevertheless cute. Of course, Bo doesn't share Lulu's enthusiasm. One major anachronism pops up when a character asks the Dukes about cell phone coverage. If this is genuinely a prequel, there were no cell phones back in the 1980s. Director Robert Berlinger keeps the action moving at a steady enough clip, but you can tell that this is just a warm up of a movie with no greater ambitions that to account for all things Duke. Seasoned fans of "The Dukes of Hazzard" would be justified in looking down their collective noses at this low-budget feature and ignore it completely were it not for Willie and the origins of the series.

In short - offensive, painful to watch and not even remotely entertaining. As witless as the original Dukes of Hazzard TV series was it was at least wholesome/entertaining/witless fun with mostly talented and likable cast members. No such thing can be said about this direct to video 'prequel' to the TV series. As a person who (sadly on so many levels) remembers and enjoyed the original series I was trying to keep an open mind and hoping for a new spin on the old and 95 minutes of entertaining fluff and car chases with the General Lee. The choice for script material, acting, childish/offensive language, music, sound effects, editing and the actors themselves make the old series seem like Masterpiece Theater by comparison. Christopher McDonald and Harland Williams as Boss Hogg and Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane respectively will go down in movie history as possibly the two worst replacements for the talented Sorrell Booke and James Best from the series. Rather than good, family fun this movie is another in a long series of horn-dog teenage films with more in common with Porky's or American Pie. Full of crude language and sexual innuendo (even in the rated version) and references, likely only to get an 'R' rating, as a replacement for actual humor or storyline. I won't even comment on the pointless and excruciating to watch cross-dressing scene. Even the sound is poorly done with, in one scene, the exhaust noise from the General Lee coming from the left (hood) side of the screen as it was started for the first time. Don't buy this movie, don't even rent it - go out and buy/rent one of the first 2-3 seasons of the series.