Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

"Hallelujah brother!" Jane Fonda, a beautiful and talented eternal young girl(obvious with such a dad...) and a million-karat talent called Lee Marvin. You can see from a distance that Marvin loved the two roles he's doing in the movie, he is absolutely fantastic. Nat 'King' Cole and Stubby Kaye they bring a unique charm to the film, being the singing narrators. Good job Elliot Silverstein!

A comedy and western amalgam in 1965, director Elliot Silverstein's feature debut, CAT BALLOU breathes the last hurrah of the latter genre, a young Jane Fonda is cast as the titular heroine, Catherine Ballou, a schoolteacher-turned-outlaw in Wolf City, Wyoming, assembles a posse of bandits after her father (Marley) is shot dead by an evil hired-gun Tim Strawn (Marvin), to seek for justice and revenge. If the synopsis sounds too gruesome, I can assure you that the film has no design to align itself as a grim gunslinger thriller, you will witness neither blood nor dead bodies on screen, on the contrary, it jollily juggles between a mood-enlightening romance of Cat and Clay Boone (Callan), an outlaw-wannabe who is green, flippant but has a faint semblance of a chevalier, and a rowdy, reckless action-er highlighted by Kid Shelleen (Marvin again), a drunkard, has-been legend marksman.Notably, the film also heavily features two balladeers (Kaye and King, the latter's presence is his silver screen swan song), narrate the overblown myth of Cat Ballou in the Greek chorus fashion, belt out verses from the Oscar-nominated "The Ballad of Cat Ballou"and other ditties written by Mack David and Jerry Livingston, which to a certain degree, dangerously teeters on being soporific and cringe-worthy thanks to its smug insistence.Lee Marvin won an Oscar for his dual impersonations of the two sides of the same coin, a quite atypical occasion where the Academy is overwhelmed by comedic bent other than pathos- outpouring theatrics, Marvin is indeed a blast, to play against a poker-faced Fonda, he munificently dissipate his laugh-a-minute antics of a deadbeat souse, but when it's time to suit up for some serious matters, he can vigorously reborn as a traditional western hero in all glamour and panache, to humour the ingrained gun-worshiping demographic. Fonda, in her career breakthrough and soon to be sexed up as a sex symbol of the era, is gorgeous to behold, and it is only her could ride that awful mustard-yellow dress in the barroom country-dance-turn-to-brawl tradition. Last but not the least, a politically-correct portrayal of a native Indian, Jackson Two Bears (Nardini), aside from tamely grooming Kid Shelleen with deference in the ritualistic moment, he is the most trustworthy person Cat can depend on, her guardian angel and the one of the most integrity among the gang.Western has already been long on the wane at the time, CAT BALLOU braves to elevate itself from being a footnote by sticking out as a novel genre-buster with a sheen of popular appeal, thus reaches out an audience beyond its pigeonholed marketability, in fact, that's something more relevant than the film's own artistic ambition half-an-century later.

I get that the movie is a spoof on westerns, but it's just not funny. Not sure why the screenplay got nominated for an academy award, the writing is pretty bad and off in this movie. Every punchline pretty much doesn't work to the effect it should. I give this movie a 5 rating and I'll break it down why.2 Stars for Lee Marvins performance. Everyone else is pretty much off in their performance and that's due also to bad pacing, directing and a poor script. But Marvin saves the movie in some sense. Lee Marvin has one of the best scenes in the movie where he goes to confront his brother, but the scene is so out of context, it belongs in a completely different movie. I think Marvin should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor and maybe won in that category, but winning for Best Actor? He's not the lead by far in this movie.I give 3 stars for just looking at Jane Fonda. Her legs and buttocks are to die for, she was always a workout fiend on her legs and it shows in this movie. They talk about how J-Lo started the big booty craze, but really Jane Fonda did in some way, she has a huge booty for a white woman, one with muscle and definition too. So I give 3 stars just for drooling over her body in this one. And she's always nice to look at in the face too.Other than that, this one isn't worth much of a look.

Jane Fonda plays the heroine in director Elliot Silverstein's "Cat Ballou," a hilarious western comedy about young, beautiful school teacher who becomes a train robber to avenge her father's murder. Lee Marvin co-starred with her in a dual role as the ruthless killer Tim Strawn and the alcoholic gunslinger Kid Shelleen whose life has been immortalized in dime novels. Cat's father Frankie (John Marley) owns land that the Wolf City Development Company wants. When conventional methods such as stuffing manure down his well doesn't work to force Frankie to sell, the Wolf City bunch dispatches Tim Strawn. Strawn is an evil looking gunman who wears a tin nose over his nose that was bitten off in a fight. Before Frankie dies, Cat summons Kid Shelleen for $50 to help them. Frankie is astonished to learn that Shelleen is an alcoholic. As it turns out, Shelleen shoots well when he is boozed up. He can strike a tin can flying through the air with a single shot. After Frankie dies, Shelleen takes the outcast Cat and her companions, Clay Boone (Michael Callen) and Jed (Dwayne Hickman), and her Native American pal Jackson Two-Bears (Tom Nardini) to the infamous Hole-in-the-Wall hideout. Our heroine plans to rob a train. As it turns out, the man who owns the train is an Englishman, Sir Harry Percival (the ever dependable Reginald Denny), who is the man behind the Wolf City dastards. Our heroine kills Sir Harry by accident when she brandishes a pistol and they struggle over it. During their scuffle, the gun discharges and kills Sir Harry. Cat is imprisoned in the Wolf City jail and sentenced to hang on the gallows. Naturally, our heroes arrange to rescue our heroine. The scene when the drunken Shelleen is sitting astraddle his horse that is leaning against the wall of a store with its fore hoofs crossed is very funny. Lee Marvin won an Academy Award for her performance. Stubby Kaye and Nate King Cole play a charismatic pair of balladeers who appear at intervals to warble and strum the ballad of Cat Ballou. This film bears striking resemblance to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" in certain parts. Jane Fonda is gorgeous as usual and endearing as the heroine.