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Paint Your Wagon Customer Reviews (13 - 15 of 30 Reviews)

Wonderful Musical
This film was wonderfully entertaining with a fun and unexpected
cast of western "crooners" such as Lee Marvin & Clint Eastwood.
The songs are memorable and the script clever & funny.
We will be viewing this film again very soon.

The Call the Wind Mariah!
Homer Simpson once said of PAINT YOUR WAGON, "Aw. Why did they have to screw up a perfectly serviceable wagon story with all that fruity singing?" Okay, that is a bit extreme, but he is entitled to his opinion.

PAINT YOUR WAGON is another musical directed by Joshua Logan who brought us the colored-filter heavy SOUTH PACIFIC and the close-up heavy CAMELOT. And of this musical trilogy, PAINT YOUR WAGON is by far the most successful visually.

What more can one hope for from a musical than wonderful musical scoring and song arrangements? Here they are nothing short of exceptional! The songs from LERNER & LOEWE are not their most popular and they suffer even more in this film where they are handled by also-ran singers like Jean Seberg and the youngster Clint Eastwood. But, the worst sound comes from the 'character-only' voice of Lee Marvin. He is not a singer but he sure embodies his role. The only exceptional singing voice in the film is Harve Presnell demonstrated beautifully in his glorious rendition of THEY CALL THE WIND MARIAH.

Both Marvin and Eastwood are great in the meandering story as is the production design. But, the story has some difficult issues in it: From prostitution, drinking, smoking to multiple spouses. We can get by that, though, especially if you sit around long enough to watch the destruction of NO-NAME CITY. Its nice to see a widescreen release of this on DVD but, something additional on the disc would be nice, or at least, Chapter stops highlighting the songs.


Paint Your Wagon
There are some movies you love against all reason. PAINT YOUR WAGON is a musical western that isn't much of a musical - stars Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood can, charitably, be said to be able carry a tune, but not very far before you wish they'd set it back down. Besides, beyond `(They Call the Wind) Maria', pleasantly done by baritone Harve Presnell as gambler Hard Luck Willie, there just aren't a lot of memorable songs in this one. Its creds as a western are a little suspect as well. The hero is the drunken scalawag Ben Rumson (Marvin), and the most notable thing he does in the movie is to marry Elizabeth (Jean Seberg) and share her with Pardner (Eastwood). At two hours and forty-some minutes PAINT YOUR WAGON is too long by at least an hour. The story rambles and seems more obsessed with mud then it is with telling a tight, coherent story.
On the other hand, if this isn't Lee Marvin's best performance, it's certainly my favorite. Clint Eastwood is out of his element and, if anything, looks a bit embarrassed - which, for some perverse reason, doesn't bother me a bit. In fact, it kind of adds to the sloppy fun. Seberg is radiant. Although they don't fit together all that well, the various scenes - the discovery of gold, the auction of Elizabeth, the kidnapping of the six prostitutes, the multiple initiations of callow farmboy Horton Fenty (Tom Ligon) - are delightful.
PAINT YOUR WAGON is an episodic, sloppy mess. It's also very irreverent and very, very funny.

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