Un cowboy alle Hawaii

James Garner ("Costain") is washed up on the beach of an Hawaiian island where he is befriended by a widow "Henrietta" (Vera Miles) and her young son "Booton" (Eric Shea). They are struggling farmers, and so he sets his mind to try to help them out. All of this much to the chagrin of local bigwig "Bryson" (Robert Culp) who has designs on their cattle and on the good lady. The ensuing adventure is actually quite clunkily put together. It mixes mysticism, romance and avarice before an ending that though innovative, I found rather impractical and even a little cruel. It is still quite a fun family film to watch, though - perhaps some of the attitudes to and of the locals might not quite fit nowadays, but viewed in the spirit in which it was made 50 years ago, it is typical of the Disney-style of message mixing adventure and morality, and is just about worth 90 minutes of your time.

Perfectly watchable Disney fare. You can read the lot points elsewhere. But two things stood out that I winced at, the Hawaiians were simplistic and stereotyped as childlike innocents lazy folks, and the cattle were treated atrociously.

I love the movies Holiday Inn and Song of the South, uh.... except for the Blackface Minstrel number in the former and the "happy slave" trope in the later.

Castaway Cowboy is really nothing special at all. I saw it as a kid in '74, and forgot its plot. Now I'll remember the plot because a lot more sensitive to the suffering of sentient beings, animals AND people.

I don't know why I didn't see "The Castaway Cowboy" when it was in the theaters. It came out when I was seeing all of Disney's movies. Oh well, I watched it tonight and I thought "The Castaway Cowboy" was a good movie. A lot of it was really good. It is a well acted, fast moving movie. It's not your average western and I kind of liked that.

"The Castaway Cowboy" begins with Mr. Costain (James Garner) washing ashore on the island of Kaua'i in the Hawaiian Islands back in 1850. It seems that Costain was kidnapped and forced to work on a ship...and he availed him a chance to escape by jumping overboard.

Soon Costain is befriended by a widow and her son. The MacAvoys have a large plantation there, but it's being underutilized and the crops are failing. Costain has an idea...why try to make pennies on crops when there are dollars to be make cattle ranching. This film is about the difficulties encountered trying to make a go of it. Some of the difficulties were cultural, some were definitely man-made.

In 2022, this film might be seen as a bit politically incorrect in the somewhat paternalistic way the Hawaiians are portrayed....and Disney+ mentions this on a tacked-on prologue. Fortunately they have NOT trimmed the film. I also noticed near the end that Costain was using a revolver...something pretty much impossible in Hawaii at the time. The revolver wasn't mass produced until the 1850s...and finding one in 1850 in such an out of the way place seems more than just unlikely. Not a major problem...just something this history teacher noticed.

All in all, a decent movie...especially since in the 20th century Kaua'i DID become a big cattle producing island! Yep..cowboys and cattle on the island!

Not bad, not good.

'The Castaway Cowboy' is a run-of-the-mill live-action offering from Disney. The casting is fine but plain, while the plot is alright if unspectacular and entirely predictable - especially the love story, which is one of the most obvious I think I have ever seen. The humour is decent, probably the best part of this.

James Garner (Costain) and Vera Miles (Henrietta) are a duo once again, following on from their exploits together in 'One Little Indian' a year prior. Eric Shea plays Booton, who I feared would be yet another annoying Disney kid actor but he's actually OK all in all.

The villains are extremely forgettable, in fairness Robert Culp (Bryson), Gregory Sierra (Marruja) and Nephi Hannemann (Malakoma) don't get much to work with - unexplored potential; solid actor choices.

This should be far more entertaining, especially as it's an adventure film.