Rancho Deluxe

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.

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.

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 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.

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.