User reviews

Two modern day day cattle rustlers cut up stolen cattle while talking about the tooth fairy. Macho ranch owners who at one time used to run beauty parlors. Romantic candlelight dinners that turn into wild sex orgies and last but not least $50,000 steer who tears up a motel room. You also get to see the 'world championship pong game'. This is the very first video game that two of the rustlers play while talking business.

This is just a few of the off the wall ingredients that await you in this thoroughly engaging, thoroughly quirky little charmer. To say it is just quirky wouldn't be doing it enough justice because it is much more than that. Writer McGuane literally takes every cliche and then playfully works against it. It's success comes from it's ability not to betray itself. No contemporary or 'normal' characters and no broad humor. It's flashiness comes through it's subtlety and laid back nature. Like a good western ballad it's sly and knowing without ever looking like it.

This is somewhat similar to McGuane's 92 IN THE SHADE that came out at roughly the same time. Both are good and deal with eccentric characters and humor yet this one fairs better. Mainly because director Perry edits it more tightly. All scenes revolve either around character or story developement. No scenes are excessive in length. Thus you have a better pace and better story momentum.

This is a fun movie to watch over and over. Simply because it is so original and done in a very original way. It also makes a good point about the decline of the modern day west which is and maybe always was just a state of mind.

Slim Pickens has his best supporting role since DR STRANGELOVE.

Filmed on location in Montana which is gorgeous and a real treat since a lot of films aren't done there.

You've gotta love these whimsical '70's flicks. And, it was interesting seeing a younger Sam Waterston after so many years of seeing him play a character with the gravitas of Jack McCoy. Kudos to Charlene Dallas, even though, according to IMDb, she didn't have much of a career. An enjoyable film to watch. Grade: B+

Rancho Deluxe is a western comedy starring Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston. This movie was filled with interesting couples. First, we meet Jack (Jeff Bridges) and Cecil (Sam Waterston), friends looking for their way in the West. Jack is an easy going kid, looking for the easy road in life. Cecil is the brains of the duo and is fiercely proud of his Indian heritage. Together they make quite a pair. In and interesting scene we learn a bit more about their backgrounds and find Jack comes from an extremely well-off family and Cecil's father is a proud Indian too. This helps to understand them better. The next couple are the girlfriends, Betsy and Mary. They are just as quirky as their boyfriends. And the dialogue between the girls, is as funny as the guys, and makes you believe they really are sisters. Next is duo, John and Carla Brown. They are former beauty shop owners, who now own a ranch. Silly cowhands, Kurt and Burt, are the next two interesting characters. And lastly there is Uncle Henry (Slim Pickens) and niece Laura. They come and stay at the Browns' ranch to help solve the mystery of the movie. Which is, who is killing John Browns' cattle? Uncle Henry is nothing short of hysterical as he appears to be doing nothing to help solve the crime he was hired to solve. Niece, Laura, is not as dumb as she is playing either.

Mix all these colorful couples together along with a mystery to be solved and you have Rancho Deluxe. The best part is that none of the characters seem to take themselves too seriously with the exception of John Brown. He seems to be the only one not to be in the jokes of the movie. And this makes his role even funnier. So, relax and enjoy Rancho Deluxe and watch everyone get what they deserve in this fun western.

Rancho Deluxe is a rare delight. It's a Western with a modern twist. The `good guys' are the ranchers. The `bad guys' are rustlers, down and out young men who poach cattle just to get by, pay their rent, and eat. Naturally, your sympathies lie with the rustlers, because they're the underdogs.

We also sympathize with the rustlers because the ranchers are wealthy, socially prominent and dominant – everything the rustler's aren't. They have everything they could want, so they're bored. And when the rustling problem appears, they treat it as sport – like hunting a predatory animal. But their boredom takes other amusing forms as well. In one scene, the lady of the house tries to light a fire with the ranch hands. She's one of many cowgirls in the movie, women who like to be in the saddle, and to be the saddle. `Come on, goddamit,' she yells at the cowboys, Burt and Kurt. `I want some Gothic ranch action around here! I want some desire under the elms! I want to see some smoldering blazes down at the old corral!' It's hilarious. These guys are worthless. So it's a sad irony that her husband, who boasts that the B-Bar-Lazy-T has `the best matrons and the best sires,' must confine his boast to the non-human mammals on the ranch. When he takes his prize stud-bull to the county fair, the announcer describes it as having `tremendous thickness and length… This bull has it all: size, bone, trim and color. It just brings tears to my eyes.' One can almost see the tears of unsatisfied desire in his wife's eyes as well – that all the virile sires are bovine.

Slim Pickens, a former horse-thief turned cattle detective, is brilliant, funnier than ever. And then there are the scenes that provide a little social satire. Speaking of the Western love of pickup trucks, for example, one character denounces them as `a sickness here worse than alcohol or dope. It's the pickup truck death. And there's no cure for it.' I wonder sometimes if I don't recognize the disease right here in Flagstaff.

All in all, Rancho Deluxe is a very entertaining hour and a half.

Rancho Deluxe is something one doesn't see much of these days, a comedy that one has to pay close attention to in order to understand what has happened at the end. Although there are broad comedy aspects to the film, such as when our protagonists shoot up a Lincoln Continental Mark IV with a Sharps 50 Buffalo Rifle, the subtlety with which the plot unfolds is not something I'm used to seeing in comedies.

Having said that, I didn't find the movie funny enough to laugh out loud or interesting enough to keep (DVD version). I bought it because there were some good reviews on Amazon.com, and because Slim Pickins and Jimmy Buffett are in it.

Although the movie is just 92 minutes in length, it seems longer as the plot takes its time unfolding. That's not to say the plot is complex but rather the opposite. The plot is simple and could likely have had its proper unfolding time within the confines of a one-hour TV program. Consequently, the movie seems to have been padded with scenes that do little to advance the plot.

Nevertheless, it's important to pay attention if you want to understand the ending. Despite the simplicity of the plot, certain things are left for the viewer to surmise. But you might find that this movie isn't worth the effort.

A pair of cattle rustlers targets a rich rancher. The characters are generally cartoon-like, which would be alright if the film were funny. Although the actors deliver their lines as if this is a broad comedy brimming with laughter, the film is totally lacking in humor. Not only is it devoid of laughs, but there is hardly a plot to hold one's interest. It starts with an uninteresting conversation between Bridges and Waterston and it goes downhill from there. Bridges and Waterston are supposed to be charming and endearing for sticking it to the rich, but they come across as self-absorbed jerks. The cast features a number of familiar faces in supporting roles but they can do nothing to overcome the lousy script.

Never mind the movie, Monsieur Pickens' performance in this film is a significant event in the history of cinema. If he'd never done any other films, except perhaps Dr. Strangelove and Blazing Saddles, he'd live forever in my memory simply for the scene in Rancho Deluxe where he describes his dream of being in Egypt in the days of the Pharaoh, and expresses consternation at having that dream disturbed. And the speech he gives at the end was another of those earth-shattering moments that stick with you like flies to mayonnaise. Ah, what an actor. Every time he's IN the movie, he's the one you're watching to see what he does, because you know it'll be something you'll remember.

I've learned over the years that it's the supporting players who make the movie. And in some respects, in many of his other movies, Slim Pickens always seemed a kind of updated Andy Devine, western comic relief but not much else. In this (and in the other two films I mentioned) we get to see another side of M. Pickens. More than a clown, he's a one-man show, as much of a scene stealer as, say, a vaudevillian in a movie full of Shakespearan actors. To tell the truth, the rest of the movie is occasionally disappointing, although Sam Waterston was fascinating to watch, showing a promise which sadly never fulfilled itself. Clifton James and particularly Elizabeth Ashley are great fun. Curt and Burt, played respectively by Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Bright, are more or less adequate. Jeff Bridges acts just like Jeff Bridges.

However, hands down, this is Slim Pickens' movie. The man was brilliant, what can I say.

Did they really expect to corral horses in the Crazies by smoking pot and screwing? Mostly about yahoos coming from other places. Not about hard working locals.

There are three edit-versions I've seen of this. Best is the uncut. Another removes a small sex bit with Patti D'Arbanville topless but it's fine anyway. Another takes out many funny parts for "moral transgressions", loses the whole movie, and shouldn't be seen at all. I won't name those cable stations that show it. This is an important movie. Sam ("Killing Fields") Waterston and Jeff Bridges both really got their careers rolling in this. Slim Pickens climaxed his great body of work. Harry Dean Stanton revived his career. Director Frank ("The Swimmer") Perry got it right, grainy and relaxed like a home movie. Most laid back and brilliant, wit abounds, the scenery stuns, and it makes you feel good. A delight, at least for us of the Baby Boomer generation.

Genuine sleeper. Was there ever anyone better at playing a "good ole' boy" than the Hollywood-bred Jeff Bridges. Here he's an upper-class dropout turned Montana cattle rustler, of all things. When he and Indian partner Sam Waterston aren't shooting steers or cavorting with the girls, they're making plans for their Rancho Deluxe where they'll retire in luxury. That is, if inept rancher Clifton James doesn't catch them first. Back in my old Saturday matinée days, rustlers rode horses and captured whole herds, while ranchers gathered in posses and tracked them down. Not now. Instead the boys ride in pickups and chainsaw the steer where it drops, while the two-man posse gets a bird's eye view from a helicopter, not that it does rancher James any good.

Chuckles galore in this crafty screenplay that manages some neat twists and a whole truck load of colorful characters. There's James's wife (Ashley), sort of a slick Montana version of Lady Chatterley, along with lucky ranch hand Harry Dean Stanton who makes first-class use of a skinny aspen tree. Then there's broken-down cattle detective Slim Pickens. You know, the guy last seen riding Dr. Strangelove's A-bomb into the smithereens of a Soviet city, along with comely daughter Charlene Dallas who's also an occasional virgin. I hope whoever did the sharp-eyed casting here got a bonus. They certainly deserved one.

Actually, my favorite part is when Waterston gets together on a lake bank with wise, old Dad. Now, I was always told that drink was the curse of the working class, or maybe it was work itself. Anyhow, not so, says Dad, at least not so in Montana. Instead, says Dad, Montana's curse is the pickup truck. Everybody stays broke because everybody has to have one. Get a few bucks and what do they do—they buy a pickup, afford it or not. In fact, the state is being impoverished and overrun by these 4-wheel critters. Anyway, it's a humorous and apparently incisive observation from novelist McGuane himself.

Then too, for those who've ever wondered where the store-bought flies so beloved by fishermen come from, the movie answers the burning question. And speaking of shotgun marriage, watch Bridges teach the interlopers a lesson in bedroom manners in a humorous bit that stands expectation on its head. All in all, the 90 minutes remains an oddball and unromantic look at the modern frontier. But with the clever script and colorful characters, the movie also amounts to a light-hearted and slyly understated treat.

Rancho Deluxe is a wryly skewed take on the Western as only Tom McGuane could have made it; the protagonists are cattle rustlers, the ranchers are wealthy, new money dilettantes with sexually frustrated wives, and the marshal from out of town is an old railroad detective who knows a good gig when he has one, and spins it out as long as he can, which means he does a masterful job of NOT catching the rustlers for as long as he can.

That's the plot, and Tom McGuane presents it in a masterfully understated script which captures the laconic silences of the plains as well as the craziness of the honkytonks and the loopiness of doped-up rustlers and their girlfriends. Law and Order's Sam Waterston steals the movie as the chronically stoned/drunk Native American rustler (one wonders if this cast was in small part an homage to the old-timey Westerns in which Jewish actors were cast as Injuns), even though Jeff Bridges is in the dramatic foreground most of the movie.

Waterston puts in an effortlessly authentic performance as someone who is content to watch life rush on by as he rolls in the turf with his lady, and pot the odd steer with that great "cattleman's carbine" cap and ball black powder rifle he and Bridges' character use to ply their trade.

This movie has a wonderful Jimmy Buffett score - "Livingston Saturday Night" sets the frenetic honkytonk scene admirably, while the other scenes have more soulful, reflective Buffett songs in the background.

I'll be honest, I watched the movie BECAUSE McGuane's brother-in-law Buffett wrote and performed the score, but I found myself drawn into the plot and interested in the fate of the characters, in a sort of laid-back way. By modern film standards the pace of this film definitely lags, but it was shot in the 1970s, back when this was not the major sin against commercial film-making that it is now.

"Laid-back" is the right term to sum this movie up - it was very much a creature of its mid-Seventies origins. It's a mood movie, good for those evenings when you're not up for car chases, tense emotional scenes, or side-splitting laughter. And the soundtrack rocks.

A truly funny, gentle, intelligent movie. A rare cinematic experience, in that the surprise ending doesn't leave one feeling manipulated. Slim Pickens' performance was on a par with his work in Dr. Strangelove. A great "western" for those who,like myself, don't particularly like "westerns".

i have sentimental reasons for loving this movie. the outdoor sex scenes make this a great date movie (at least for me). but the look on clifton james face at the end, as he shakes slim pickens hand is just priceless. i was jeff bridges age and a bit of an outlaw myself, so i really related to the entire attitude that was the theme of this movie. great acting all around, and no hard feelings at the end. all smiles. what i enjoy the most about this type of film is that the viewer has no idea in which direction the movie is going. the scenery is just beautiful, jimmy buffet is in his prime, and the combination of veteran character actors, plus the up and comers, make this a great viewing experience.

Hilarious dry, sophisticated humor with insight into the ranching life of the Big Sky Country of the US. Really hits the mark for the cowboy-hippie life of Bozeman and Livingston, Montana. Great performances from Slim Pickens, Jeff Bridges, Elizabeth Ashley, Joe Spinell and shows that Sam Waterston actually had a lot of talent until he fell into the "Law and Order" grind. This is probably the best film written by Thomas McGuane and one of Frank Perry's best efforts as a director. Would probably make a great double bill with "The Adventures of Buckeroo Banzai." Anyone interested in the last Golden Age of American Film (late 60's - 70's) should see this film.

My favorite "modern" western with a great cast, solid story line and plenty of laughs. Music in the background by Jimmy Buffet is a delight. Not a serious, complicated story but one that is interesting enough to make you stick around and enjoy the performances of Bridges, Waterston, Ashley, Dallas and Pickins. Slim's line after he cuts out the slug that downed a steer out on the cold Montana range, (he identifies the bullet as coming from a 50 caliber Sharps rifle) "This is startin' to git downright romantic!" is a hoot. Sexy Charlene Dallas playing her role as the innocent niece made me want to see more of her. To top it all are the great wide open spaces of Montana as backdrop to the film. The ideal movie to view on a weekend afternoon with lots of popcorn and a cold glass, or hot cup of your favorite beverage.

To those of you who put this on your 'desert island' menu, congratulations. If you were sentient in the period contemporary to the making of Rancho DeLuxe, you get a clear picture of the real comedic and artistic value of the film. If you missed all that and the movie is still on your list, well, kind of like Slim Pickens describes missing the circus of the century, you're winging it pretty well.

The mystery and controversy that kept Perry/McGuane's little masterpiece out of distribution is a travesty on par with Moby Grape's having been dealt the lousy hand as a rock supergroup. It was about 15 years after release before the film circulated on VHS and its only circulation occasionally on late night TV was in a version so mutilated by censors as to render it incomprehensible.

Had the film been in wide release and properly circulated, it likely would have accrued the same sort of cult following dealt to Rocky Horror and King of Hearts. But the world went down a different path and Urban Cowboy became the substantial cinematic view of how hipsters saw 'western' and 'rural' America. Too bad. But they can't know what they don't know.

If you found yourself standing in Bridges' boots in 'Last Picture Show', you likely found great reason to enjoy Rancho DeLuxe as a comedic romp on lots of levels. And his part is only a fraction of what makes this one worthwhile. I hope I'll say the same about his 'True Grit' (an inflated and mediocre dime novel in print and piddling exploitation of John Wayne's career as film), but I'm not holding my breath.

1975 to 2013 is a lot of years. I had the sound track on vinyl and had to replace it with an iTunes download. And now I'll probably purchase a digital version of the movie. First time I saw Jimmy Buffet, Sam Waterson, Slim Pickens, Harry Dean Stanton and Jeff Bridges. I can't argue with the "serious" comments posted here. But I do know this, I have the fondest memories of watching this film, constantly talk about it, want to see it again, and again, need to here the music regularly. Few movies stick with me like this, most, if not all of Robert Altman's movies, but this is different and fun and makes me sit up and take notice. Be forewarned, I'm not talking about "GREAT" cinema, just a wonderful and entertaining movie. Books move me, technological writing captures my analytic mind, but this movie was fun and I want more.

I liked "Rancho Deluxe," although it wasn't double-over-with-laughter funny, it had its moments. The film reminded me of many Peckinpah films since it touched on the "new money" meets "western ways" conflict Peckinpah examined in many movies, particularly in the comedy "The Ballad of Cable Hogue." Indeed, Jack and Cecil are rather anachronistic with their "profession" of cattle rustling, or killing rather, and it was if they were TRYING to get caught. I mean, if you're rustling, wouldn't you just swipe the cow off the range in a trailer instead of SHOOTING it? Interesting to see Waterston as somewhat of anti-authority figure--I say "somewhat" because amidst the wackos in the movie, no one is really an authority--these people would stumble over their own shadows. Enjoyable, and definitely a beer-and-popcorn time passer.

Thomas McGuane, 25 years ahead of the commercial marketplace, invented the [post]modern dialogue SNAP now central to the filmfop vogue. Anyone who enjoyed Jeff Bridges as Dude Lebowski MUST see this movie. Also recommended for those interested in the final disposition of the American West, those who thought Sam Waterston might be an actor, those who can't believe Slim Pickens could improve on his "Dr. Strangelove" role, etc.