- I wouldn't have guessed that there would ever be an occasion for Lee Marvin, Jane Fonda, and Nat King Cole to all be in the same film. Cat Ballou suggests that perhaps there should not have been such an occasion. The film follows the life of the eponymous title character (Fonda), whose schoolteacher's innocence rapidly transforms into an outlaw's bravado after her father (John Marley) is murdered for his land. With the help of two genial rustlers (Michael Callan and Dwayne Hickman), a redoubtable family employee (Tom Nardini), and a drunken hotshot (Marvin), Ballou vows to get revenge on her father's killer (also played by Marvin) and his unscrupulous employer (Reginald Denny). Let the fun begin?
- The main problem with Cat Ballou is that it spends most of its 97 minutes straddling the uncomfortable divides that exist between genres. There's a lot of music, most of which squanders Cole's talents, but not quite enough for it to be a musical. There's some humor, my favorite instance of which involves a rancher trying to speak Hebrew to a Native American, but the film is rarely that funny. There's some drama, some slapstick, some gunplay, and some social commentary, and none of it handled terribly well at all. Lee Marvin plays a silver-nosed criminal who doesn't even come close to being as reprehensible or memorable as his characters from The Big Heat or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. Marvin also plays a drunk who isn't even as convincing as...well, Lee Marvin himself in his hilarious interview with Roger Ebert. It's a rare film that allows sped-up comedy footage to become boring, but this one somehow manages. If you ever really want to be disappointed, watch this film and then realize that For a Few Dollars More came out in the same year.
