The Ballad of Davy Crockett

If you like sappy, uninteresting, goofy frontier movies with bad dialogue and mediocre acting, this movie is for you. I almost turned it off, but I thought I would give it a chance. I wanted to like it, but it really was that bad. And don't get me started about how historically inaccurate it was.

It's too bad, since there is plenty of historically accurate research out there about Dave's Crockett. They could have made this a much better movie. While the Disney series was pretty fluffy (made for children, so I guess it had to be), Fess Parker and Buddy Ensen made it enjoyable to watch.

(I guess certain kids might like this movie)

The dialogue was stilted and unbelievable and the plot made little logical sense from one scene to the next. The historical inaccuracies were bad enough but were largely irrelevant in the long run. It almost seemed that they added a couple of scenes and a line or two of dialogue as an afterthought in order to tie it to the actual Davey Crockett. The acting was inconsistent but no amount of skillful acting could have saved this dog of a movie. How it's gotten 6 stars is a mystery to me.

I'm an old man who remembers fondly the Disney movie from my youth. I realize now how juvenile in some ways it was; but, at least, it made sense for the intended audience. This one makes no sense for anyone with a functional brain cell. It was just horrible!

I could not continue watching this movie because it has no regard for actual history. Crockett's wife did die in 1815 but then it showed Davy in a meeting with Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren when he got the news that she was ill. Davy didn't even enter state politics until 1821 and was no where near Washington DC until 1827. Jackson and Van Buren didn't win the White House and push the Indian Removal Act until 1831. That is when Davy became and Anti-Jacksonian.

Anyway, others have said how un-interesting the movie was and I agree. But when you can't even get the storyline to match the facts, you have to create it all and that is why the story lacked entertainment. I became suspicious when they showed his boys to be early teens and Crockett was only 29 years old when his wife died. I'll go watch the 1955 version or the 1960 "The Alamo" and at least get somewhat accuracy.

Crockett is an interesting figure, the second American celebrity in our history (after Franklin) and there's been no extensive serious film portrayal. A good movie on Davy is needed but this isn't the one.

The only thing this film has going for it is good production values. The plot is saccharine to the point of silliness (think Perils of Pauline,1914). Colm Meany is a solid actor but is annoying in some of the jejune scripts he has taken on (e.g., this one and Alleged, 2010).

Unless this film was targeting evangelicals I can't see why any thinking producer would have approved the script. Nothing here for any adult audience. Maybe we need another film rating category: N for niche audience.

What a dumb movie, full of lies and misrepresentations of a really decent man. In 1815 when this movie takes place Davy has already lost his wife Polly in March, and has 2 sons and a daughter. He didn't support the Indian Removal Act which wasn't introduced until 1830 Nonsense scenes of wolves attacking him and 'taming' horses already so tame they came up to his camp in the woods. Where do these Hollywood directors come up with this malarkey. Davy's life was already so interesting its too bad they didn't make a movie about that! Colm Meaney does a good job of playing an a--hole. The whole Northwest Fur Trading Company in the Southest - hmmm, that company was mostly in Canada. Beautiful scenery though.