RenoPeters

I'm sure this one was issued on DVD only because it was an early Glenn Ford movie. Both Charles Vidor (the director) and Ford made a much better film together a couple of years later with "Gilda".

The action is supposed to take place in 1863 in the Utah Territory. I guess all the history books are wrong because evidently the railroad was already there six years before the "Golden Spike" ceremony.

Halfway through the film, the action takes a turn during a barroom brawl and suddenly we are watching a comedy. I guess since WWII was being fought at the time, this movie was designed to offer some entertainment value for the troops abroad and the folks at home.

It's watchable but entirely forgettable. Much better westerns were made by Michael Curtiz a few years earlier along the same theme. So see "Dodge City" and "Virginia City" instead. Indeed, the latter features both Randolph Scott and "Big Boy" Williams who also appear in "The Desperadoes".

This story would never have made it into a widely distributed film except for the fact that the main character is a young Indian lady in contemporary London. The performances of the three youths make the film enjoyable to watch but the story is totally predictable and the direction mediocre if not annoying. There are too many filler scenes with pop song backgrounds that add nothing to the plot. The final scenes of the wedding party are particularly obnoxious and I believe insulting to the Indian culture. The final shots during the credits played to the awful song "Hot, Hot, Hot" might be the lowpoint of any of the films that I have seen this year. Perhaps I have been on too many cruises where that song is overplayed night after night.

Saying all that, Parminder Nagra is a delight to watch and her performance lifts the movie above the banality of its plot. I hope to see more of her in future roles, hopefully with better scripts and direction.

If this movie is at all similar to "My Fat Greek Wedding", I am very glad that I did not see it.

My rating is 5.5 stars but Imdb only allows me to vote 5 or 6. I voted 5 to counterbalance (in a very small way) all the 7's and 8's that it is receiving.

I just don't see the point of this movie. It reminds me of the within the movie spoof of old Hollywood films in "Singing in the Rain" except that this mostly unfunny spoof is the real movie. There's a lot of wasted talent here. I'm not sure why they wasted their time on it.

In the 60's, there were two major folk music styles that had different audiences. There were the very white and do-good activist folk groups like Peter, Paul and Mary and the New Christy Minstrels along with Pete Seeger and The Kingston Trio. The other style of folk was the more blues oriented and darker, more traditional artists like Bob Dylan, Dave Von Ronk, Eric von Schmidt, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, the Farinas, Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie.

I never had much interest in the first style of folk musicians so a spoof of their reunion held little interest for me. The only good scenes in the film, in my opinion, were those between Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara. There were some tender moments there and I really liked her husband, the English guy with the trains but he kind of disappeared somewhere in the middle.

Kind of a waste for a major film release. This should have been a TV movie.