This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Unusual and charming western, though it is really more of a romantic costume film. The sets and costumes are glorious, as others have noted. Very unusual color combinations for the ladies. Great authenticity to the sets. Lots of Spanish being spoken, without translation. The acting is good and the story is not at all the usual wagon train picture. I did not care so much for all of the singing. It was a little distracting. Filler if you will. But the romance was good. It was kind of an old fashioned melodrama actually. Well just watch it, but do not have expectations ahead of time because it is not at all what you would expect.

I was unfortunate enough to see this last week. The book has long been a favorite of mine; the movie is a disaster.Garnet, Florinda, and Oliver were completely miscast---poor Gwen Bristow must still be whirling in her grave after seeing what Hollywood had done to her wonderful saga. Some of the minor roles (John Ives, the Handsome Brute) were adequate as were the sets and costumes. However,the main characters completely failed to resemble their literary counterparts, and their acting was wooden and totally unconvincing. The book is a wonderful story brimming with action and should have made an exciting and colorful movie. Instead, it is incredibly boring and tedious. What a shame!

Jubilee Trail represented one of the last attempts of Herbert J. Yates to get the American movie public to accept his wife Vera Hruba Ralston as a star. Again she didn't score with the public and pretty soon Vera and Republic Pictures were history.Actually Republic Pictures really ended the day that John Wayne got shed of his long term contract with Republic. Yates made more money loaning him out to other studios than he did with the films that actually starred the Duke. After all, Duke's loanout services were pure profit, no overhead expenses involved in producing high budget epics that befit his growing star status.John Wayne couldn't have saved Jubilee Trail because the central characters here are two women, Vera and Joan Leslie. Vera's running from a mysterious past in New York and she hooks up with Joan and her new husband John Russell. Russell is traveling west with a pack train of supplies for he and his brother Ray Middleton. Russell also has a past himself that involves some kanoodling with the owner of a local ranchero and a small bundle of joy he only finds out about just as he's starting west.Middleton's real upset about the marriage as they've ruined plans for a merger between the two families. He takes an unreasoning dislike to Joan Leslie and is determined to gain control of the child she's carrying now after Russell is killed.It really is more soap opera than horse opera. There's an Indian attack sequence, but I'm sure it's in there so western fans can have a little action. There's also a nice gun battle between Forrest Tucker and two bad guys in Middleton's employ looking to steal Leslie's child after it's born. Middleton is the kind of villain you are more likely to see on daytime soaps.Tucker has the hero role, but he really does little between the action sequences but look solemn and declare his love for Leslie. Pat O'Brien has a supporting part as a cashiered army surgeon who drinks to forget his troubled past. And presiding over it all once they reach California is Vera at Jim Davis's saloon.Vera's got the Marlene Dietrich part here, but Jubilee Trail would have been a whole lot better if Yates had gotten Marlene Dietrich for the part.

This is a wonderful story which was the most poorly cast movie I've ever seen. I've read the book 20+ times in my life (obviously a favorite!) but the casting person obviously didn't waste their time doing the same even once. The book has rich characters which the movie didn't bring out. Overall, terribly disappointing. Florinda was the blonde, not Hispanic. Garnet had the black hair (I guess in the movies in those days, blondes were the good girls and dark hair was the bad...kind of like the white hat/black hat cowboys!A perfect cast (impossible because of age differences) would have Gary Cooper as John, William Shatner as Oliver, Kirk Douglas as Texas and James Cagney as Oliver's brother, to name a few! That's just part of my dream cast.My advice is to go get the book from the library!