Support Your Local Sheriff Review

It's an easy film to take for granted, because its such a smooth, utterly enjoyable G rated comedy.  It's the kind of film that you might find in the dictionary under the heading : " they don't make'em like this anymore." Three or four years after it was made, most of the cast and the same director re-teamed to make another enjoyable Western Comedy called Support Your Local Gunfighter.

I was half expecting when I recently viewed this film that it would not be a film that held up well and would feel dated, tired and not be very entertaining.

Instead, what I found was a film full of genuine laughs, peppered with superb comic performances, a wonderful sense of parody and a fairly fast pace from start to finish that never sacrificed the humor for a romantic subplot or a bit of pathos.  

In a word.  It's a gem!!!  One of the very best and funniest Western comedies that you are ever likely to see.  

James Garner who starred in television's Maverick series and probably did his finest work in the film The Americanization of Emily often has the kind of charm, charisma and smoothness that Cary Grant did, but instead of a continental sophisticated air, Garner has a Jimmy Stewart-regular Joe kind of air about him.   In ‘Sheriff' he has a breezy laid-back air that makes him a fish out of a water kind of guy-perhaps a sitting duck in a town full of wild and wooly frontier types used to conducting themselves in various lawless ways.   Of course what no one counted on was a Sheriff that uses his smarts and is a really fast accurate draw with his gun.

We are in the small frontier town of Calendar, Colorado  as it suddenly unexpectedly strikes gold, and suddenly the place becomes a rootin-shootin-lawless place where people are being shot just every day, and often caused by on of the Darby Clan.

Jason McCullough (James Garner) is hoping to get to Australia in the near future.  When he sees ridiculously inflated prices for food and a bed in the boom town he's ridden into, he realizes he needs a job and maybe he could take out a stake, get some gold and get to Australia.  So he applies for the job of sheriff because it pays pretty well, and includes room and board.  The town council with people like Henry Jones and the Mayor, Harry Morgan are very happy to give him the job, since they have had three sheriff's in about three months-two of them killed, one who ran away after just an hour in the job.   Jason winds up being a big improvement over the last sheriffs but right away he tangles with one of the Darby Clan (Bruce Dern), convincing him to stay put in a jail cell that doesn't have any bars on it.   He also convinces a group of hell-raisers to ride into town in a nicer manner and not kick up as much dust.  Hmm this laid back sheriff from nowhere is going to change things. Then there is the Mayor's klutzy spunky daughter (Joan Hackett) falling head over heel (literally) in love with him (and she happens to hold the deed to the gold min).  

Before long, the patriarch of the infamous and feared Darby clan comes riding into town (Walter Brennan), and Jason's stand-off with him is done with one finger.  "Get your finger out of my gun."  Brennan yells at him.  "Don't point your gun at me."  Says Jason.    You'll be laughing at the encounter.   

Now if you know your Westerns a bit, you'll realize Brennan's character and performance is a lot like his evil Old Man Clanton in the classic My Darling Clementine.  Here it is mined for parody and comic gold.  You have Brennan being overwhelmed by the soft spoken Garner, while one of his dim-witted sons sits in a cell without bars, complaining how he is not being fairly treated, shortly after he has killed someone in cold blood.   Its absurd of course and very very funny.

And even though this film is rated G, there's plenty of ‘adult' themed humor.  You have Madame ‘Orr's House  where the town council spends a lot of time, and you have gunfighters out to kill Jason, shoot-outs and plenty of mayhem-just without any gore or even foul language. There's a few laughs mined out of the side-stepping of foul language as well !!!

The pace and performances in the film could not possibly be any better.  Everyone plays their part perfectly like well greased parts of a very efficient machine.  Jack Elam, Henry Morgan and all of the supporting cast don't over-do their bits of business or wear out their welcome (like they do in some other films they have been in). 

The music score is full of stingers and signals that you are watching a comedy.  It serves at times like a laugh-track, punctuating a comic moment a bit too loudly, but actually when you listen to a lot of scores used for Westerns-it too is right in league with how many of the classic Westerns used their scores.  

It was a real pleasure to re-discover this little comic Western gem, that I intend on enjoying again in the near future.