The Castaway Cowboy
Year: 1974
Genre: Adventure, Family, Comedy, Western
Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Director: Vincent McEveety
Cast: James Garner, Vera Miles, Eric Shea, Robert Culp, Manu Tupou, Gregory Sierra
Crew: Herb Taylor (Sound Supervisor), Vincent McEveety (Director), Chuck Keehne (Costume Design), La Rue Matheron (Hair Designer), Christopher Hibler (Associate Producer), John B. Mansbridge (Art Direction)
Runtime: 91 minutes
Release: Aug 01, 1974
IMDb: 6.40/10 by 23 users
Popularity: 5
Country: United States of America
Language: English
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Not bad, not good. 'The Castaway Cowboy' is a run-of-the-mill live-action offering from Disney. The casting is fine but plain, while the plot is alright if unspectacular and entirely predictable - especially the love story, which is one of the most obvious I think I have ever seen. The humour is decent, probably the best part of this. James Garner (Costain) and Vera Miles (Henrietta) are a duo once again, following on from their exploits together in 'One Little Indian' a year prior. Eric Shea plays Booton, who I feared would be yet another annoying Disney kid actor but he's actually OK all in all. The villains are extremely forgettable, in fairness Robert Culp (Bryson), Gregory Sierra (Marruja) and Nephi Hannemann (Malakoma) don't get much to work with - unexplored potential; solid actor choices. This should be far more entertaining, especially as it's an adventure film.
James Garner ("Costain") is washed up on the beach of an Hawaiian island where he is befriended by a widow "Henrietta" (Vera Miles) and her young son "Booton" (Eric Shea). They are struggling farmers, and so he sets his mind to try to help them out. All of this much to the chagrin of local bigwig "Bryson" (Robert Culp) who has designs on their cattle and on the good lady. The ensuing adventure is actually quite clunkily put together. It mixes mysticism, romance and avarice before an ending that though innovative, I found rather impractical and even a little cruel. It is still quite a fun family film to watch, though - perhaps some of the attitudes to and of the locals might not quite fit nowadays, but viewed in the spirit in which it was made 50 years ago, it is typical of the Disney-style of message mixing adventure and morality, and is just about worth 90 minutes of your time.