Ridin' on a Rainbow

After watching "Ridin' on a Rainbow" , I felt a bit disappointed. While I liked the change of venue you get in the film, I felt there were just too many songs and the female lead a bit hard to understand. Perhaps it's just me...but I wasn't very impressed by this one.

The story begins with some crooks robbing a bank and killing the bank president. They did this during a show being put on by a showboat and they chose this time for their villainy because so many people in town were at the event. Their accomplice is Pop Evans...and because he lives on the showboat, they give him the money to hold. As for Gene (Gene Autry), he nearly catches the two killers. But he's not going to give up an he decides to join the showboat in order to keep an eye on Evans' annoying daughter (Mary Lee)...as it's obvious she knows more than she's admitting.

There were two major problems with the film. While I enjoy listening to Gene Autry sing, there were just to many other songs by folks on the showboat...such that it felt more like a musical than a western. Second, Mary Lee was often very good in these films (she made quite a few with Autry), here she is confusing....acting petulant and annoying when her father was responsible for a lot of misery. Making her a bit of a sociopath was, in hindsight, a mistake. Overall, not a bad film but clearly a second or third-rate film from Gene...watchable but disappointing.