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Tall Tale: The Unbelievable Adventures of Pecos Bill Reviews

1995
1 hr 38 mins
Fantasy, Family, Kids
PG

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A young boy draws on the inspiration of legendary western characters to find the strength to fight an evil land baron in the old west who wants to steal his family's farm and destroy their idyllic community. When Daniel Hackett sees his father Jonas gravely wounded by the villainous Stiles, his first urge is for his family to flee the danger, and give up their life on a farm which Daniel has come to despise anyway. Going alone to a lake to try to decide what to do.

It's homespun homily time: TALL TALE may look like a rousing adventure story for the whole family, but it's really a vehicle for the kind of tiresome moral aphorisms that only William Bennett could love: "You can do anything at all, if you just believe." Young Daniel Hackett (Nick Stahl) must help save his family's farm from rapacious land-grabbers led by evil J.P. Stiles (Scott Glenn). He finds allies in Pecos Bill (Patrick Swayze), Calamity Jane (Catherine O'Hara), John Henry (Roger Aaron Brown), and Paul Bunyan (Oliver Platt), all of whom figure in the tall tales he's heard from his dad (Stephen Lang). Modern kids probably don't have the faintest idea who these folkloric legends are, and it's just as well, since the movie betrays no understanding of their cultural significance or historical meaning.