"Support Your Local Sheriff!", like most comedy films, creates a sort of alternative reality dimension in which the characters are more bumbling and strange, behave completely unlike anybody would have in real life, and produce jokes that only the audience finds effective. And unlike others I can think of, "Support Your Local Sheriff!" does this very well. James Garner plays a take-it-easy man "on his way to Australia" who stops to take his first job ever as a lawman in a boomtown somewhere, sometime in the Old West. And right from the beginning, things really start to get awkward.
Garner shares the screen with other popular and talented actors such as Jack Elam, Harry Morgan, Walter Brennan, Joan Hackett, Gene Evans, and Bruce Dern. I felt the performances were very well-done, most noticeable for Harry Morgan as the town's loud-speaking, acting-before-thinking mayor and Jack Elam as Garner's reluctantly appointed deputy, having been "promoted" from "shoveling horse...working around the stables." Walter Brennan did a sort of parody on some of his other villainous characters, still maintaining a good performance and still being a comical character without making any of the modern "funny" tactics such as acting out of the ordinary.
That goes for the entire film. Even though it's a comedy and nothing in this film would really happen in a sane world of sane people, it makes it look as if it COULD happen. That's the problem with comedy films nowadays: they don't make things look like they MIGHT happen. This film does.
Bottom line, I recommend "Support Your Local Sheriff!" for its outstanding way of blending two quite contrary genres and still making a very effective and entertaining film. I found myself laughing several times and this is definitely the kind of film to suit an entire family just looking for a good, non-serious film that does not taking cliché or distasteful tactics in order to try and make us crack up.
Garner shares the screen with other popular and talented actors such as Jack Elam, Harry Morgan, Walter Brennan, Joan Hackett, Gene Evans, and Bruce Dern. I felt the performances were very well-done, most noticeable for Harry Morgan as the town's loud-speaking, acting-before-thinking mayor and Jack Elam as Garner's reluctantly appointed deputy, having been "promoted" from "shoveling horse...working around the stables." Walter Brennan did a sort of parody on some of his other villainous characters, still maintaining a good performance and still being a comical character without making any of the modern "funny" tactics such as acting out of the ordinary.
That goes for the entire film. Even though it's a comedy and nothing in this film would really happen in a sane world of sane people, it makes it look as if it COULD happen. That's the problem with comedy films nowadays: they don't make things look like they MIGHT happen. This film does.
Bottom line, I recommend "Support Your Local Sheriff!" for its outstanding way of blending two quite contrary genres and still making a very effective and entertaining film. I found myself laughing several times and this is definitely the kind of film to suit an entire family just looking for a good, non-serious film that does not taking cliché or distasteful tactics in order to try and make us crack up.