Something Big

Delightful comedy western
An outlaw (Dean Martin) and his gang need a Gatling gun in order to rob the treasure of an infamous Mexican bandit (Jose Angel Espinosa). To this end, he makes a deal with a grungy and lonely bandit (Albert Salmi) to get him a woman (women are scarce in the territory) in exchange for the gun. Martin holds up a stagecoach and kidnaps a woman (Honor Blackman, GOLDFINGER) for the lonely outlaw. The problem is ... she's the wife of a Colonel (Brian Keith) in command of the regional cavalry. Comedy westerns are hard to pull off unless they are of the satire/parody kind like THE PALEFACE and BLAZING SADDLES so it's a pleasant surprise to discover this engaging sleeper. It manages to balance its subtle humor without making a shambles of the genre. I don't want to overpraise it, it's rather modest in its aims and execution but I can't deny I was quite taken with it. Martin, playing it fairly straight, is at his most appealing and Keith brings his own brand of solid magnetism while the leading...

The DVD is in Anamorphic Widescreen!
I've watched the disc when it got released today and would like to confirm that, despite Amazon's listing as "Fullscreen," the transfer is in it's intended widescreen aspect ratio.

Transfer is also clean and crisp. Worth the investment for those interested.

Edit: Amazon.com has just updated the listing to the correct "Widescreen" specification.

Something Big
I saw this movie when it was first released and the reviews were mixed to downright savage. What reviewers seemed not to realise was that Andrew McGlaglen was an afficianado of John Ford.His father, Victor, acted in many of his films. Something Big was an affectionate parody of Ford's cavalry films, mostly with John Wayne and most of the supporting cast of Something Big. Not meant to be taken too seriously, the film was a vehicle for Dino who was huge on American TV and most other media at the time. It was lambasted for poor taste but compared to what has been released onto the public in recent times it is almost Disneyesque by comparison. 3/4 stars for entertainment value. The one jarring note of the movie was Carol White's Scottish accent but it was no worse than Dick Van Dyke's Cockney accent in Mary Poppins and I enjoyed both films in spite of dodgy accents!

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