Saturday, March 28, 2015

Perhaps I should give Cat Ballou a second chance

TCM is running a night of movies tonight in which one actor plays two roles, with one of the movies being Cat Ballou at 10:00 PM. I thought I hadn't done a full-length post on the film, and to some extent that's true. The post I've linked to above is really more of a half-length post. Still, the things I was thinking about writing about Cat Ballou this morning more or less show up in the post.

Probably the biggest problem I have with the movie is Stubby Kaye, as his musical interludes with Nat King Cole are supposed to be funny but fall flat, and wind up being almost irritating, or at least intrusive. I shouldn't necessarily have a problem with the comedy in the rest of the movie, as I've given a fairly positive review to a comic western like Support Your Local Sheriff before. There's also films like Alias Jesse James, which isn't bad, although it is a Bob Hope vehicle, which might be problematic for some who find Hope's later movies an acquired taste.

So Cat Ballou may be one of htose movies that deserves a second chance. If only it could have been released without the Stubby Kaye sequences. That having been said, there are probably going to be a lot of you readers who will like the movie, even with the Kaye scenes.

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