Cowboy Holiday

Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams was known for being a very good sidekick--a dumb yet lovable one at that. However, in this early film, Williams has the chance to be the lead. Due to his poor acting and the even worse acting by the rest of the cast, it comes off as a dull third-rate production.

The film stars with Williams coming to visit some old friends on his way to a much-needed holiday. There is a funny gag here, but other than that the film is dreadfully dead--serious and flat. He finds out that his friend, the Sheriff, has been ordered to arrest the Juarez Kid--but Williams suspects that its not the Kid who is doing all the stealing but a much bigger man is posing as the Kid. And, since the Kid is his friend and he is sure he's not guilty, Williams spends much of the film trying to prove this.

Some things to look for is especially bad acting by the Kid and his Mama--who can barely speak English and really needed captions. A few other bad things to look for are the hilariously bad sound effects (especially when they were fighting) and the scene where the crook is fired at--by a guy who is only about 6 feet away--and he MISSES! So, not only is the film very flat but dumb. And, compared to a film with Tim McCoy, Roy Rogers or Gene Autry, this one is VASTLY inferior. A real drag.

This is a bit of a curio western for 2 reasons. A) the hero looks a lot like, yes, George W. Bush, and B) The stunt / fight coordinators must watch wrestling a lot because whenever people get into a fight, they always wind up throwing their opponents around (and uh, what WAS the deputy trying to do.. mount him?) and always escaping with a high fly through a window. This story is about how one cowboy, who just wants a vacation from all the cowboying that he does, but gets sucked in by a case of identity theft, when a short Mexican 's identity is taken by, yes, a tall fat man. No one notices the identity switch, but the guy who is doing the theft commits a lot of crimes in town, and everyone blames the Mexican, of course. Only our hero cowboy can solve this case! Pretty silly, but not really boring.

I've seen lots of films with Guinn Williams who usually played good natured palookas and sidekicks of the male lead in westerns and not in westerns. In his youth in silent and early sound days he was still a cowboy lead. In Cowboy Holiday this was the first time I'd ever seen him as a lead.

Williams unlike a lot of his contemporaries knew when it was up for him as a lead and he wisely transitioned to character roles where 99% of film fans know him today.

Cowboy Holiday lacks a certain cohesion that would have even made it believable to the Saturday matinée crowd. Williams is on a holiday visiting his foster parents, his foster father being the sheriff who is having a devil of a time capturing the Juarez Kid. Williams knows the kid played by Julian Rivero and he sure he's not doing all the bad things attributed to him lately. Someone is masquerading as the Juarez Kid and cashing in on his bad reputation. It's up to Big Boy to find out who it is before stepdad loses his job.

Maybe bad editing or a bad script in the first place, but there's a whole lot that just doesn't make sense. Still if you want to see Guinn Williams as a cowboy hero instead of lunkhead sidekick Cowboy Holiday is the film for you.