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It is quite tragic his passing had to coincide with Wagons East as it was his last movie and also his worst at least in our eyes. They often say a decent putting together of everything can make it shine, however, it is hard to believe that he shot his remaining key scenes before his death at the location. It is even harder to accept since his character is completely onedimensional and is only required to look funny very few times.
This film is painful to watch and is a parallel of other so-called comedies like Clifford. I am not sure whether Richard Lewis is supposed to be a hip man these days, but what I do know is that he is definitely disgraced in a motion picture now shackled to the supposedly hilarious jokes about barnyard animals, dozy lads who love their cattle, mockery of homosexuals and usage of hookers and plenty of people being clumsy around. It is Michael Moore-esque in the amount of gimmicks using such devices as let’s record some people falling. All these mixed alongside some pure torture of having to listen to cringe-gloating fiddle songs the battery is as tired as any idiotic score can sound.
This particular movie opens with a shot of a poorly maintained town and a subtitle that reads Population 67. Afterward, some masked antagonists proceed to rob the bank and the subtitle shifts to Population 62. The Deadpan Comedy is tremendous. The plot takes place in the old Western era, a place an alarming number of people want to run away from. They hire Candy as their wagon master and form a caravan to go east.
Notable characters consist of a banker with a low tolerance to robberies played by Lewis, John C. McGinley who portrays a gay bookseller that meets his demise when a cowboy decides to purchase Pride and Prejudice with the intent of using it as toilet paper from a local hooker played by Ellen Greene, and Candy as James Harlow whose hidden truth is that he was the wagon master for the Donner Party whose journey resulted in cannibalism.
Candy appears bizarrely unfocused in the film. Behind a hefty beard, a cowboy hat, and oversized Western coat, he is often simply nowhere to be seen, and in many other scenes, he does not seem to have big moments, humorous speeches, interesting punchlines, or tangents to digress on. There is some hint of sadness that has come into some of Candy’s recent films and is visible here too; he appears like an endearing outcast, who despite his size and bravado is very fragile.
The screenplay by Matthew Carlson and the film direction by Peter Markle is so bad that I wonder how they managed to get funding from a big studio. This film is completely lacking in pacing, tension, setting, or even basic humor, and collapses into a series of shots featuring a random bunch of talentless people pretending to act in ridiculous scenarios. Everything that could possibly be deemed nonhumorous is crammed in comically, but in a crass, noncomedic way, such as the nightcap Lewis wears to bed which has a tassel on it.
Action sequences invariably ended with people plummeting off cliffs. We then get to see them in the mud, where we are meant to have a good laugh. I didn’t find it particularly funny. I wasn’t exactly thrilled either by the subplot that dealt with what can generously be called ‘hip Indians.’ And when land speculators conclude that the wagon train must be stopped because of negative publicity for the West, they hire a ridiculously huge posse that rides and rides and rides and rides in patterns overlaid with the Infinite Action Montage, only to culminate in having more or less disappearing to be completely forgotten.
John Candy made some nice movies. Mine include Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987) and Only the Lonely (1991). It is unfortunate, for more than one reason that this happens to be his last one.
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