Blog Directory CineVerse: A Maverick heads to the big screen

A Maverick heads to the big screen

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Deep, philosophical and thematically resonant "Support Your Local Sheriff" is not. But entertaining and crowd-pleasing it certainly is, and there's no shame in that. This film riffs on virtually every western movie trope you can think of--short of adopting an irreverent fourth wall-breaking "Blazing Saddles" approach--and still manages to leave 'em laughing, despite its predictable plot and pedestrian direction. Here's our CineVerse group's collective take on this late sixties genre comedy:

WHAT CLICHES AND CONVENTIONS OF THE WESTERN GENRE DOES SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF PLAY WITH?
The high noon showdown
The lone brave deadeye pitted against multiple villains
A colorful but dense deputy
A feisty female love interest
Cowardly townspeople
Public brawls and fistfights 
A band of familial bad guys led by an older patriarch
An attempted jailbreak
A shootout finale

THIS FILM BRINGS THESE OTHER MOVIES AND TV SHOWS TO MIND:
Its sequel, Support Your Local Gunfighter
Maverick and The Andy Griffith Show
Skin Game
My Darling Clementine, also starring Walter Brennan
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Westerns where an outsider or lone protagonist helps to bring law and order to a wild frontier town—including Destry Rides Again, High Noon, Shane, Rango and others 
Paint Your Wagon, Cat Ballou and El Dorado, earlier spoofs of the western genre
Blazing Saddles, a later parody of the western genre

WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE WAS DIFFERENT, UNEXPECTED OR MEMORABLE ABOUT THIS FILM?
The cast is filled with fan favorite character actors and familiar faces, including Jack Elam, Harry Morgan, Walter Brennan, Bruce Dern, Henry Jones, Walter Burke and Willis Bouchey.
It can feel like a made-for-TV movie that draws direct influence from the editing and beats of TV sitcoms and westerns of the time. Roger Ebert, who wasn’t a fan, suggested that this picture “is a textbook example of the evil influence TV has on the movies. It’s essentially a lousy TV situation comedy dragged out to feature length.”

OTHER MOVIES DIRECTED BY BURT KENNEDY
The Train Robbers
The War Wagon
Support Your Local Gunfighter

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