This is really just a live-action cartoon with the same ultra-minimal entertainment value as the thinnest material on Cartoon Network (in case you're in a part of the world where that's available). It may help you get through a night when you have to stay up and have absolutely no other way to pass the time.
The gags are so witless and so wearily timed that when the payoff comes, you may literally think, "Is that it?" Dial your expectations 'way down -- and then double down, just to be on the safe side -- before trying to let this entertain you.
Still, barren though it is, I didn't find SYLG downright annoying (not having paid to see it, but caught it on TV). Once I realized that I was not going to be laughing, I turned my attention to the cavalcade of familiar faces. The cast is full of actors great and small (well, medium-sized and small) riding into the sunset of active careers. Here's a partial list:
Joan Blondell, whose Hollywood credits do make "medium-sized" seem slighting. The definitive wisecracking blonde of variable respectability but constantly good heart who, it seems, can never be rich or thin. Her best moment of a great many may be in Topper Returns (1941).
Marie Windsor, the definitive tough dame of film noir. Catch her in Force of Evil (1948) and The Narrow Margin (1952).
John Dehner, who played Paladin in Have Gun, Will Travel on the radio and later turned up everywhere on television. His voice was so authoritative and his presence so strong that I always thought of him as a star making a cameo appearance.
Ellen Corby, who worked a corner in mousy little women -- often blighted or crusty, occasionally endearing, sometimes incomparably sinister. She has her moment in films as different as It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Vertigo (1958), and through nearly five decades of American television.
Herb Vigran, the ultimate example of the ubiquitous bit player whose name you don't know. You'd recognize him, though, by the heavy eyebrows, the comfortable paunch, the non-threatening height and receding hairline, and above all the complacent nasal baritone of the guy next door (if your door be in the Midwestern US). Have a look at his credits on IMDb when you're in the mood for a LOT of scrolling.
Kathleen Freeman, hearty and apple-cheeked, often cast as Swedes or other blonde ethnics but also in many general supporting parts where her character either requires respect or fails to give it. You may remember her as the elocution teacher in Singin' in the Rain ("I cahhhhn't stand him").
Willis Bouchey, another actor with an authoritative voice who seems always to have been white-haired and recreating a real-life career as a judge, doctor, businessman, military officer, or politician. When he's not crooked, he's the soul of integrity.
Dub Taylor, who began life in Virginia and, if anything, became more Southern after that. From his Hollywood debut as an amiable Alabaman in You Can't Take It with You (1938), he was the quintessential Southerner or other rustic who is never at a loss for words, always overflowing with the rural idiom though not always with the milk of human kindness. In the age of television, he blended so naturally into the world of The Andy Griffith Show that he could turn up as various characters.
Several actors returning from the earlier Support Your Local Sheriff: Harry Morgan, Jack Elam, Henry Jones, and Walter Burke, as well as Freeman and Bouchey (above): a core of supporting players with centuries of constant work in film and television among them. Of course, there's also the star, James Garner.
The fact that so many of the same actors appear in both a good comedy and a very poor attempt at comedy along the same lines serves to remind us that actors can't do much to strengthen a weak script. True, Walter Huston said, "Hell, I ain't paid to make good lines sound good. I'm paid to make bad lines sound good." But even stars can't make a whole movie sound or look much better than it is. Supporting players who specialize in types are limited to bringing those types to work and making us associate the inferior movie at hand with the better ones we've seen them in.
That, for me, was the only pleasure to be had in watching Support Your Local Gunfighter: watching experienced actors do a job with their usual competence and apparent good cheer, all digging together toward the mother lode of paychecks for everyone.
The gags are so witless and so wearily timed that when the payoff comes, you may literally think, "Is that it?" Dial your expectations 'way down -- and then double down, just to be on the safe side -- before trying to let this entertain you.
Still, barren though it is, I didn't find SYLG downright annoying (not having paid to see it, but caught it on TV). Once I realized that I was not going to be laughing, I turned my attention to the cavalcade of familiar faces. The cast is full of actors great and small (well, medium-sized and small) riding into the sunset of active careers. Here's a partial list:
Joan Blondell, whose Hollywood credits do make "medium-sized" seem slighting. The definitive wisecracking blonde of variable respectability but constantly good heart who, it seems, can never be rich or thin. Her best moment of a great many may be in Topper Returns (1941).
Marie Windsor, the definitive tough dame of film noir. Catch her in Force of Evil (1948) and The Narrow Margin (1952).
John Dehner, who played Paladin in Have Gun, Will Travel on the radio and later turned up everywhere on television. His voice was so authoritative and his presence so strong that I always thought of him as a star making a cameo appearance.
Ellen Corby, who worked a corner in mousy little women -- often blighted or crusty, occasionally endearing, sometimes incomparably sinister. She has her moment in films as different as It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Vertigo (1958), and through nearly five decades of American television.
Herb Vigran, the ultimate example of the ubiquitous bit player whose name you don't know. You'd recognize him, though, by the heavy eyebrows, the comfortable paunch, the non-threatening height and receding hairline, and above all the complacent nasal baritone of the guy next door (if your door be in the Midwestern US). Have a look at his credits on IMDb when you're in the mood for a LOT of scrolling.
Kathleen Freeman, hearty and apple-cheeked, often cast as Swedes or other blonde ethnics but also in many general supporting parts where her character either requires respect or fails to give it. You may remember her as the elocution teacher in Singin' in the Rain ("I cahhhhn't stand him").
Willis Bouchey, another actor with an authoritative voice who seems always to have been white-haired and recreating a real-life career as a judge, doctor, businessman, military officer, or politician. When he's not crooked, he's the soul of integrity.
Dub Taylor, who began life in Virginia and, if anything, became more Southern after that. From his Hollywood debut as an amiable Alabaman in You Can't Take It with You (1938), he was the quintessential Southerner or other rustic who is never at a loss for words, always overflowing with the rural idiom though not always with the milk of human kindness. In the age of television, he blended so naturally into the world of The Andy Griffith Show that he could turn up as various characters.
Several actors returning from the earlier Support Your Local Sheriff: Harry Morgan, Jack Elam, Henry Jones, and Walter Burke, as well as Freeman and Bouchey (above): a core of supporting players with centuries of constant work in film and television among them. Of course, there's also the star, James Garner.
The fact that so many of the same actors appear in both a good comedy and a very poor attempt at comedy along the same lines serves to remind us that actors can't do much to strengthen a weak script. True, Walter Huston said, "Hell, I ain't paid to make good lines sound good. I'm paid to make bad lines sound good." But even stars can't make a whole movie sound or look much better than it is. Supporting players who specialize in types are limited to bringing those types to work and making us associate the inferior movie at hand with the better ones we've seen them in.
That, for me, was the only pleasure to be had in watching Support Your Local Gunfighter: watching experienced actors do a job with their usual competence and apparent good cheer, all digging together toward the mother lode of paychecks for everyone.
