There is a point near the middle of the big screen version of “The Dukes of Hazzard” where the filmmakers thankfully take good ol’boy cousins Bo (Seann William Scott) and Luke (Johnny Knoxville) Duke off the reservation. Leaving the back roads of Hazzard County and venturing into the urban wilds of big city Atlanta, Broken Lizzard alumni Jay Chandrasekhar (“Super Troopers”) and writer John O’Brien (“Starsky & Hutch”) have the audacity to actually make jokes at their character’s expense. Best of the bunch, suck in a traffic jam passers by alternately leer, jeer and cheer the Duke’s proud display of the Confederate Flag on the hood of their car, the fabled orange Charger the General Lee.

The moment is completely out of left field and the director slowly builds the gag culminating it in the projects with Bo and Luke asked to step out of their car with their faces covered in thick black ash. It’s about as politically incorrect as anything I’ve seen this year, but it is also mercilessly funny touching on so many hot-button issues and emotions I literally couldn’t believe my eyes.

Not that this scene even belongs in the movie. It’s a fluke, and there is nothing else remotely like it anywhere else. Of course, virtually nothing – save maybe the spectacular car chases – actually belongs in the movie, but that didn’t stop producers from making it anyway. While it is, mercifully, nowhere near as bad as the ungodly awful trailers made it appear, “The Dukes of Hazzard” is still pretty rotten. In fact, if it actually had been as bad as it looked, I might have actually had something to talk about. As it is, this tired retread is so noxiously boring I’m hard pressed to write a single word.

The plot has something to do with the nefarious Boss Hogg (Burt Reynolds, obviously needing the cash) swindling the citizens of Hazzard County out of their land to open up a coal-producing strip mine. One of those farms just happens to belong to Uncle Jesse (Willie Nelson), so Bo, Luke and their cousin Daisy (Jessica Simpson, badly cast but not as bad as you’d think) spring into action to save the family farm. Oh, and there’s also the annual Hazzard County Road Rally; Bo’s looking to win that for a record fifth time.

Not much else to report. Granted, not much else needs to happen when your flick is based on the insanely popular 1970’s television series about Southern moonshiners outwitting crooked redneck small town police. But where the show had charm, this is just crass; where the Dukes’ has character, here they’re just caricatures. The movies is a drag, never bad enough to get you angry but never funny or endearing enough to at least make you smile. And, while the casting seems nice on the surface (Nelson and Reynolds are somewhat inspired coup, as is the presence of Linda Carter), everyone is so all over the place you’d think they were all making different pictures.

The basic lowdown is this: Simpson is actually kind of okay (and her physical trainer deserves a raise) even if her cover of Sinatra’s These Boots are Made for Walkin’ is terrible, Scott and Knoxville are better in the outtakes than they are in the movie, whomever cast M.C. Gainey as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane should be shot (and the person who cast David Koechner as Cooter deserves a raise) and the car stunts are phenomenal. Other than that, the less said the better. I’ve seen enough car wrecks this year, and while this one doesn’t take the cake it’s still nothing more than a junkyard distraction blindly driving nowhere.

Film Rating: ê1/2  (out of 4)