Review of The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning

My wife is a huge Dukes of Hazzard fan, and I enjoyed it as a kid as well. When I found out they made this 'sequel' to the movie, I really was looking forward to watching it. We sat down and watched it last night. Although I found the first 1/3 engrossing, the second third of the movie went downhill, and the final 1/3 was just plain boring. I got out a book and ended up reading and not paying very much attention towards the end. Yes, I thought it was that bad. I figured that maybe it had a fantastic ending or something that might have made up for how far downhill it slid, but my wife says no. The main reasons I have for not liking this thing at all are 1) predictability - just about everything in this movie goes by the book, and is terribly formulaic 2) the acting - over the top, not very believable 3) the writing, and some of the lines are particularly unbelievable and off putting. They could have made a great movie out of this if they had simply paid the writers for Frasier (or some equally talented folks) to come up with a witty take on the whole concept. One thing that really made me mad was the fact that my favorite character from the series was the most annoying in this - Cooter. I just found myself hating this clueless buffoon, yet also feeling sorry for him because he was in this movie. Please skip this one - you've been warned.