Support Your Local Sheriff!

"Support Your Local Sheriff!", like most comedy films, creates a sort of alternative reality dimension in which the characters are more bumbling and strange, behave completely unlike anybody would have in real life, and produce jokes that only the audience finds effective. And unlike others I can think of, "Support Your Local Sheriff!" does this very well. James Garner plays a take-it-easy man "on his way to Australia" who stops to take his first job ever as a lawman in a boomtown somewhere, sometime in the Old West. And right from the beginning, things really start to get awkward.

Garner shares the screen with other popular and talented actors such as Jack Elam, Harry Morgan, Walter Brennan, Joan Hackett, Gene Evans, and Bruce Dern. I felt the performances were very well-done, most noticeable for Harry Morgan as the town's loud-speaking, acting-before-thinking mayor and Jack Elam as Garner's reluctantly appointed deputy, having been "promoted" from "shoveling horse...working around the stables." Walter Brennan did a sort of parody on some of his other villainous characters, still maintaining a good performance and still being a comical character without making any of the modern "funny" tactics such as acting out of the ordinary.

That goes for the entire film. Even though it's a comedy and nothing in this film would really happen in a sane world of sane people, it makes it look as if it COULD happen. That's the problem with comedy films nowadays: they don't make things look like they MIGHT happen. This film does.

Bottom line, I recommend "Support Your Local Sheriff!" for its outstanding way of blending two quite contrary genres and still making a very effective and entertaining film. I found myself laughing several times and this is definitely the kind of film to suit an entire family just looking for a good, non-serious film that does not taking cliché or distasteful tactics in order to try and make us crack up.

Now, I will even watch James Garner in a bad movie. That whole worldly wise, yet winsome thing he has going makes you think of that best bud you had in junior high.

But this is actually a very good, drown yourself in a bag of popcorn, and laugh your cares away film.

Is it a western parody or humorous homage to some of the great character actors in American western? It certainly doesn't have a mean bone in its body and doesn't rely on shock humor to get you chuckling. This film respects its predecessors and has good clean fun with them.

It's a DVD you can easily find for under $10, and well worth it.

This is a great film to have in your collection and to pull out when you have guests with varied tastes. Fantastic screenplay, staging, pacing and, most of all, incredible acting, all come together to make this a nearly perfect film. Someone says, "I don't like Westerns," you tell them this is a western "spoof" and really more of a brain-over-brawn and romance than a western in the classical sense. Another says, "I'm getting tired of romantic-comedies," you tell them that it's not the main storyline, and the romance is just another part of the spoof. There are some well-staged and funny action scenes and lots of witty dialogue. Whatever a person likes, it is in here; and whatever a person may not like, there is not so much of it in here to dominate the movie, and so much else to enjoy. Get this one in your video library as soon as possible...

The casual tone of James Garner..and Jack Elam's kinda ditzy way of worrying made it worth watching for me...but then to put Bruce Dern as an not too bright gunman and Walter Brennan as his exasperated father makes me watch it over and over for the little simple and yet careful undertones....liked it alot...3 1/2 stars here...

There hasn't been a decade since 1969 as loaded with classic Westerns as was that one year: "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid," "The Wild Bunch," "True Grit," "Once Upon A Time In The West," and this one, the least appreciated but easiest to watch.

James Garner is such a comfortable onscreen presence, it's hard to appreciate all the fine work he does in this film. It's a clever comedy that is perhaps a bit too anxious to please, but can make you laugh all the same. The supporting actors are tremendous, too. It's funny to see Dern play such a naif, but Brennan has the best time of it. His expression when Garner sticks his finger in the barrel of Brennan's pistol is priceless.

No scorpion fights, no blown-up trains, no Italian dubbing or even Strother Martin. But I can't think of a better family movie, or just something to beat the blues.