Thursday, February 8, 2018

Dirty Dingus Magee (1970)

Director: Burt Kennedy

Writers: David Markson, Tom Waldman, Frank Waldman, Joseph Heller

Composer: Jeff Alexander

Starring: Frank Sinatra, George Kennedy, Anne Jackson, Lois Nettleton, Jack Elam, Michele Carey, John Dehner, Henry Jones, Harry Carey Jr., Paul Fix, Marya Thomas, Don 'Red' Barry

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Sinatra plays cowboys and indians for adults!

Plot: Dingus Magee and his old rival Hoke Birdsill take turns at being either lawman or outlaw and being rivals or partners in crime, depending of the circumstances.



My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

The only thing that I got a good chuckle out of were the few times when someone would say something mean-spirited (like I'm gonna shoot 'em in the back) and follow it up with "It's the code of the West.".  Sometimes it was funny but either way it reminded me of that 50s MGM Droopy cartoon short where someone would do the same thing and say "It's the lawwww of the West.".  I was surprised to see how silly this got and by silly I mean ridiculous and toilet-y.  There's even a fart joke.  There's also lots of sex jokes that are probably only funny if you're ten.  I laugh at stuff like that sometimes but when it's funny.  It just wasn't that funny in this flick.  Look, I loves me some Sinatra but when he tries to be funny he speaks with a Southern drawl mixed with a stereotype black accent.  I've seen countless footage of him speaking like that (and heard live recordings) so it gets old but I can't hold that against this film because it's not supposed to come with the baggage of all of that, assuming that people hadn't heard it that much.  The movie is one scenario after another where the two (Dingus (Sinatra) and Hoke (Kennedy)) get the one-up on each other trying to steal from each other.  It's not all that bad of a movie but the crowd it was made for I think is a lot smaller than they expected.





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