Un cow-boy à Hawaï

James Garner and the Disney Corporation may not sound like a likely mix, but it did happen - twice, as a matter of fact. In 1973, Garner and Disney made a two movie agreement. Garner was looking for flavorful movie vehicles, and Disney was looking for a major star in order to regain the audience it had lost since Walt Disney's death several years earlier. But everyone's expectations were not met. The first movie, "One Little Indian", did not wow critics or audiences, and the same fate was met with "The Castaway Cowboy". It has an interesting premise - starting a cattle ranch in Hawaii during the days cowboys were kings - but the execution is severely lacking. It has a real sedate, almost boring tone for the most part. Both kids and adults will be restless. Almost nothing is done with Robert Culp's villain character - his footage can't add up to more than five minutes. It's only Garner's charisma that saves the movie from total decay, but even he can only do so much. Word of warning to parents: While the movie got a "G" rating in 1974, the movie would get a "PG" rating today due to a couple of violent fistfights.

I thought it was Australia? Oh ... that was Support Your Local Sherrif, and there is a lot of that character in James Garner's performance in this film.

Garner looks a bit heavier and a bit slower in this film, as the injuries he'd suffered in previous roles started to catch up to him. This was just before Rockford, where he often moved like an old man because of them.

This is a great fish out of water film, and the novelty is it works both ways. Garner's Costain, rescued after he escaped from a ship that shanghaied him, finds himself totally out of place among the native Hawaiians, and on a potato farm.

Once Mrs. MacAvoy (Vera Miles) learns she might leverage some wild cattle into saving her failing farm, she convinces Costain to retrain her farm hands as cowboys. That's the second fish out of water element, because the Hawaiians initially don't fare too well as cowpokes. :-)

But with training mishaps, witch doctoring, and having to figure out how to load cattle on ships with no docks available, Costain almost gives up.

Garner is always a good watch. I've never been disappointed.

Not bad, not good.

'The Castaway Cowboy' is a run-of-the-mill live-action offering from Disney. The casting is fine but plain, while the plot is alright if unspectacular and entirely predictable - especially the love story, which is one of the most obvious I think I have ever seen. The humour is decent, probably the best part of this.

James Garner (Costain) and Vera Miles (Henrietta) are a duo once again, following on from their exploits together in 'One Little Indian' a year prior. Eric Shea plays Booton, who I feared would be yet another annoying Disney kid actor but he's actually OK all in all.

The villains are extremely forgettable, in fairness Robert Culp (Bryson), Gregory Sierra (Marruja) and Nephi Hannemann (Malakoma) don't get much to work with - unexplored potential; solid actor choices.

This should be far more entertaining, especially as it's an adventure film.

I don't know why I didn't see "The Castaway Cowboy" when it was in the theaters. It came out when I was seeing all of Disney's movies. Oh well, I watched it tonight and I thought "The Castaway Cowboy" was a good movie. A lot of it was really good. It is a well acted, fast moving movie. It's not your average western and I kind of liked that.

James Garner ("Costain") is washed up on the beach of an Hawaiian island where he is befriended by a widow "Henrietta" (Vera Miles) and her young son "Booton" (Eric Shea). They are struggling farmers, and so he sets his mind to try to help them out. All of this much to the chagrin of local bigwig "Bryson" (Robert Culp) who has designs on their cattle and on the good lady. The ensuing adventure is actually quite clunkily put together. It mixes mysticism, romance and avarice before an ending that though innovative, I found rather impractical and even a little cruel. It is still quite a fun family film to watch, though - perhaps some of the attitudes to and of the locals might not quite fit nowadays, but viewed in the spirit in which it was made 50 years ago, it is typical of the Disney-style of message mixing adventure and morality, and is just about worth 90 minutes of your time.