Calamity Jane

It started out good and went south from there.

These Writers don't no anything about Calamity Jane or the wild west. The producers are sadly off base and the casting, was Lame as hell. Well not much more to say about this except I have to post 600 words to be able to post it. Yeah it is that bad a film. Too bad because Calamity Jane was a colorful character to say the least in real life. Perhaps the producers should go visit Deadwood or read a book or two and get some better actors. And what was up with Abagail? Braces were hard to come by in the 1800 out west, unless you were a rich eastern era.

Ready to settle down for an enjoyable new western movie than you have found it with Calamity Jane. Good nicely paced story - fast real looking action scenes and realistic gun fights and physical fights. Striking cinematography of the western landscape. An enjoyable western to watch. Realistic and natural sounding dialog that makes you feel that you are right back in the 1800's in the fabled Dakota territory. Deadwood was a rip roaring place full of rough and tough characters such as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane and the characters in this movie seem very true to life and believable and are well played by the selected actors.

...and settle in for a re-watch of Deadwood, the brilliant TV series that features far better acttors & depictions of Jane & Bill. This thing is a train wreck that dares to take these names in vain. Muddled and incoherent from the start, with ill-placed soundtrack music that just adds to the irritation.

Now, for the rest of the required word count - my favorite westerns, among which I count the above-mentioned TV series - The Unforgiven, The Good, The Bad & the Ugly, Hell Or High Water, The Long Riders, a whole bunch more Eastwood films, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, Lone Star, McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Lonesome Dove TV series...

I was in the mood for a good western. Something new and different. My mistake turning this on. It's downright horrible.

First the good -- the scenery is beautiful. That's it.

The script is really dumb. Just doesn't make a shred of sense. But the worst part of all is that the acting is really really really bad. Like almost laughable.

I have no idea who the woman that plays Calamity is, but she cannot act herself out of a paper bag.

She spends her time on screen mugging for the camera and putting on an obviously phony accent that she can't keep straight.

I was bored out of my mind 8 minutes into this fiasco.

The push from the studios for diversity and equality delivers us movies like this. Half rate action, changing accents, characters treated with reverence/respect/caution without any backstory to justify it, and an underwhelming end product.

I *get* that people want representation and variety, but this felt forced and contrived. Maybe we've been spoilt for choice with the range of modern westerns (Deadwood, No Country For Old Men, 1883) but this is not even close to the same league. It felt like it delivered WNBA level excitement. Acting is sub par, accents weren't consistent, and even the set/cinematography felt too CGI to be believable.

Watched on a whim - don't necessarily regret it, but won't be recommending it to anyone.