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Rancho DeluxeRating:
Release Date: 19 December, 2000 Retail Price: $14.98 OUR Price: $12.99 You SAVE: $1.99! Cast: Complete Cast (9 total) |
Rancho Deluxe Reviews
[Three-and-a-half] Remember 'Pong', the very first video game - If you do then you'll love this 'Western'
Jimmy Buffett gets very eeeasrrlly career
boost from this verrrryy country-western
soundtrack and movie appearance w/ Jeff
Bridges, fresh off starring with Clint
Eastwood in a pretty funny (and raunchy)
Thunderbolt and Ligthfoot a year earlier,
gets to play one of two modern day cattle
rustlers! Fun but don't take it too ser-
iously - I didn't, I saw it originally
for Buffett!
"The poor people of this state are dope fiends for pick-up trucks."
Rancho Deluxe (1975) is one of those films I had sitting on my Amazon wish list for quite some time before I got around to purchasing it, which I did, around November of 2005...then it proceeded to sit on my shelf for a good six months before I got around to watching it, which I did, last night...there just never seemed any urgency in purchasing or watching the film, but I'm glad I did, on both counts. Written by Thomas McGuane (92 in the Shade, Tom Horn) and directed by Frank Perry (David and Lisa, Diary of a Mad Housewife, Mommie Dearest), the film stars Jeff Bridges (Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Tron, The Big Lebowski) and Sam Waterston (The Great Gatsby, Heaven's Gate, The Killing Fields) back before he became a fixture on the television series "Law & Order". Also appearing is Slim Pickens (One-Eyed Jacks, Dr. Strangelove), Clifton James (David and Lisa, Cool Hand Luke), Elizabeth Ashley (Vampire's Kiss), Charlene Dallas (The Great Bank Hoax), Harry Dean Stanton (Kelly's Heroes, Alien), Richard `Al Neri' Bright (The Godfather), Patti D'Arbanville (Time After Time), Bert Conway (Little Big Man), and Joe Spinell (The Godfather: Part II, Rocky, Maniac) in a small, but memorable bit part.
Bridges and Waterston play Jack McKee and Cecil Colson, respectively, a pair of ne'er-do-wells who get by rustling the occasional head of cattle, hacking it up (earning themselves the as `the chainsaw rustlers' moniker in the local press), and using the beef to pay for various things like rent and such...and it's not just some old reservation beef they steal, but rancher John Brown's (James) fine prize winning, grain fed steer. Anyway, some stuff happens, Brown puts Curt (Stanton) and Burt (Bright), a couple of his ranch hands, on the case, a prize bull gets stolen and ransomed back to Brown, who eventually hires a seemingly doddering stock detective named Henry Beige (Pickens) and his comely niece Laura (Dallas) to run down the rustlers. Well, it turns out Curt and Burt do discover the identity of the boys, but instead of letting their boss in on the information, they team up with Jack and Cecil to fleece their boss out of one, big score. The story ambles along from here as Cecil's father (Spinell in some obvious `old man' make-up) relates to us the scourge of the pick-up truck, Jimmy Buffett sings a song in a honky tonk bar, Brown becomes flustered with Beige's lack of results, Curt takes a real shine towards Laura, a Continental Mark IV gets shot up something fierce with a buffalo rifle, and I learned you probably shouldn't use a Hoover to vacuum Native American rugs (the rugs could unravel). Soon after Brown begins to follow up his own lead and the big day comes when the four cohorts make their move not realizing there may be a joker in the deck.
I think one of the issues a lot of people who don't care for this film have is the fact the story seems non sequitur, without clear direction, often sliding off on unpredictable and seemingly unnecessary tangents. It feels like a bunch of loosely connected scenes were filmed, and then mashed together to create a semblance of a film. While I'd agree this lack of focus can be kind of annoying, I soon learned it was better to just go with the seemingly uneven flow of things and see where it took me. As others have stated the comedy is fairly subtle, and easy to miss if you're busy grousing about how the film doesn't seem to be going anywhere (fact is it does go somewhere, just not too quickly). There were few memorable bits in this film for me, the first being as Beige and his niece Laura sit down to dinner with Brown, his wife (played by Ashley), and the ranch hands Burt and Curt, for the first time after arriving at the ranch. When the conversation turns to Laura, she comes off as a real goodie goodie going on about how she works with the elderly and just wants to make people happy, so much so she breaks out in song, prompting her uncle to put and end to that noise. It was a very brief sequence, but it made me laugh. Another bit comes when Jack and Cecil, celebrating with some of the ill-gotten funds they squeezed out of Brown during the kidnapping of his prize bull, have a drunken soiree in their home with their girlfriends who happen to be sisters, one of them played by Patti D'Arbanville. The next morning we see the angry father, played by Bert Conway, showing up at the house, with a whole slew of relatives in tow (including the grandparents), intent on exposing the debauchery his daughters have engaged in to the entire family (it's a bit late in the game for Pops to be concerned with his daughters' moral improprieties if you ask me). The third bit that stuck out in my mind is when an anxious Brown reveals he's got a hot lead on the rustlers, and lets Beige in on the scoop (at this point he's very dissatisfied with Beige as he suspects the decrepit old fool might be fleecing him out of his money). He wakes Beige up from his afternoon nap, to which Beige seems annoyed mainly because Brown interrupted a fabulous Egyptian themed dream he was having (unsure his part in the dream, he's eager to get back to it before it's lost). I thought Bridges and Waterston made a good showing, but there seemed not nearly enough emphasis on their characters to make them truly interesting and engaging (what was with the scene with Bridges visiting his well-to-do parents and them inviting an old girlfriend over?). As a result, we're left with the supporting cast bearing much more of the story than I would have expected, and doing it well. I do give director Perry a certain amount of credit given the number of characters running around as while things got a tad confusing at times, eventually everything slides into place as the film comes to a close.
The picture quality, presented in both fullscreen (1.33:1) and anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1), is a bit grainy, but I couldn't tell if it was meant to be that way, or if it stemmed from a poor transfer. The Dolby Digital mono audio comes through uneven, as there are a number of soft spots and I was continually adjusting the audio to compensate. As far as extras there's an original theatrical trailer and subtitles in both French and Spanish (no English). Had this DVD release had a cleaner picture and a more even audio track I would have gone with four out of five stars, but instead I think three stars is more suitable. Also, I would have preferred they incorporated the original poster artwork on the DVD case, rather than what they ended up going with, which looks a little goofy.
Cookieman108
More Customer Reviews (15 total)
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