Cheap Gator (DVD) (Burt Reynolds, Jack Weston) (James Best, Burt Reynolds) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Gator

Gotta Get GATOR!
Gator is pure guilty pleasure. Burt Reynolds directed and stared in this 1976 follow up to the excellent WHITE LIGHTNING. This time the feds don't want Gator for running moonshine, but to go undercover to get evidence on his boyhood pal Bama McCall (Jerry Reed). Lots of action , fighting, boat chases and Reynolds signature style. The movie gets 5 stars but not the DVD. The transfer is incredible compared to the old VHS tape, but sadly the DVD is only FULL FRAME the movie was shot in SCOPE, so most of the picture is cropped off. It would have been nice to have a commentary track from at least Burt Reynolds, since this was his first directorial debut.

---

Badly directed, unfocused mess
After his success in "White Lightning," Burt Reynolds decided to make his directing debut with the sequel "Gator." While Reynolds would eventually prove to be a competent director with "The End" and the excellent "Sharky's Machine," he blew it with this unfocused mess. A clumsy mixture of light comedy and violent action, with ridiculous characters and a midsection that moves like molasses, "Gator" would have derailed the career of a lesser star, but Reynolds was so big in the '70's that this film represents merely a mild career bump between early '70's highlights like "Deliverance" and "The Longest Yard" and late '70's triumphs "Smokey and the Bandit" and especially "Starting Over."

The problems are numerous: To begin with, the script is poorly constructed. It begins with an exciting boat chase as moonshiner Reynolds eludes authorities and then doesn't offer any further action sequences to top it off later in the film. Further, several characters are played strictly for laughs throughout the film and then killed off in the most violent ways imaginable. While violent deaths in serious action fare can be cathartic to the audience, (especially that of a heinous villain like Scorpio in "Dirty Harry") here it is jarring and disturbing. And Reynolds the director shows no clue whatsoever as to how to end a scene, letting some ad-libbed schtick (especially his own) run on forever until it ceases being funny and simply becomes annoying. And while the supporting cast (Jack Weston, Lauren Hutton, Burton Gilliam, Alice Ghostly) is impressive, nobody gives anything close to their best performances for their friend, er director, who doesn't exactly encourage anybody to stretch. But don't miss the first five minutes, which contains the single worst performance in the history of film: talk show host Merv Griffin (!) as a bigoted, ambitious good-ole-boy governor with presidential aspirations (!!!)

Actually the only good thing about "Gator" is the performance of Jerry Reed as the villain "Bama" McCall. Best known as Reynolds' sidekick in the "Bandit" series, Reed is cast perfectly against type and creates a memorably heinous villain. Watch his performance here and you'll understand why some of us think if his career hadn't evaporated in the early '80's he could have developed into an excellent character actor. And his title song (played over the opening credits) is also a highlight--a bouncy and fun romp in the "Amos Moses" tradition--that sets just the right tone for what should have followed: a well-paced and slightly mean action comedy, which was clearly what was intended but was ruined by amateurish adlibbing and ham-fisted attempts at comedy.

Burt Reynolds is a frustrating figure in movie history: extremely talented when guided by good directors (John Boorman, Alan J. Pakula, Robert Aldrich and "Boogie Nights"'s P.T. Anderson) but frustratingly self-destructive and ill-served by the typical B-level hacks and yes-men that he surrounded himself with. "Gator" is a perfect example of everything that was wrong with a superstar career that flamed out spectacularly in the mid '80's. If he had trusted his talent and picked his projects more wisely, who knows what might have been?

Incidentally, the DVD is presented in pan-and-scan instead of widescreen, which matters since the film was filmed in Panavision and suffers greatly when cut up for fullscreen presentations. Why Reynolds films, no matter what studio releases them, seem to be exclusively presented on DVD in pan-and-scan is beyond me. Even weak films like this should be seen in their original format. That's why this DVD rates * instead of **. Thanks for nothing MGM/UA.

---

Gator
This was one of those movies I enjoyed watching, and would watch over again and again, it's quick paced, full of action, and light comedy, I would suggest this to anyone. I would have bought this along with White lightning, which came out before Gator. But Alas the Studio's blew it again, by only releasing this and White Lightning in full screen format.
So out of my basket they went. My message to the powers to be at the studio's if your going to release DVD's such as these good fun movies, release them in both widescreen and fullscreen, you might sell more copies. But what do I know I am only a consumer.