A Disappointing Continuation

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

I noticed that some of the reviewers enjoyed this film. As for me, I really don't understand why it was made in the first place and cannot recommend it.The film is set after Butch and Sundance supposedly died in a shootout in Bolivia around 1900. However, there are rumors that the Sundance Kid somehow survived and the film is about a plot to find Sundance's girlfriend (not wife), Etta (Elizabeth Montgomery) and then use her to lead authorities to the other surviving members of the Hole in the Wall Gang. Jack Maddox (Robert Foxworth) is a guy who claims to have known Sundance and offers to help Etta return to the gang's old hideout--though he's actually working for folks trying to claim the various rewards. Believe it or not, there really isn't much more to the film than this. And, by the end of the film you realize that Sundance IS dead as is the rest of the gang....which makes me wonder why they bothered making the film in the first place. A slow, meandering film with only an exciting ending to make up for all the dull stuff that preceded it. It just seems like this made for TV film was made to cash in on the success of the famous film....and, if so, why not get Katharine Ross for the lead?

At times entertaining, this is a highly speculative work of fiction that presents a 'what if' on the saga of Etta Place, girlfriend, and some say wife of Harry 'The Sundance Kid' Longabaugh. The whereabouts and fate of the real Etta Place (even her real name is in dispute) are shrouded in mystery, one of the more compelling puzzles in the history of the Old West.So for what it is, the picture offers up a scenario in which Etta (Elizabeth Montgomery) remains on the run following her adventures with Butch and Sundance, staying a step ahead of the law and bounty hunters determined to take advantage of her capture. The only real attempt at a connection to the original 1969 movie occurred when Jack Maddox (Robert Foxworth) and Etta arrived at her former homestead, and the old 'Raindrops Keep Fallin' on my Head' bicycle showed up with the tune lightly playing in the background.It's probably a plus that the movie didn't try to subvert the legend of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, even if part of the story line dealt with the Kid's survival following the Bolivian ambush. More recent historical research suggests that Robert Leroy Parker might have made it, but if you go with that theory you probably also caught an Elvis sighting.One observation that came to me while watching was the striking resemblance Foxworth had to another legendary actor, Steve McQueen. I really never noticed it before, and I used to catch him all the time back in the day in shows like 'Falcon Crest' and made for TV flicks of the Eighties. Born roughly a decade later than McQueen, it might have made sense to cast him in the lead on the life of the celebrated actor, but I'd say that that clock has run out by now.

Elizabeth Montgomery was a fine actress, but she was hardly the frontier-type, and her refined, ladylike way of speaking (not to mention her painful bouncing in the horse's saddle) makes for an unlikely portrayal of Etta Place, girlfriend of notorious outlaw The Sundance Kid, herself wanted for robbery and treason. Director Marvin Chomsky attempts to set a dusty, dreamlike mood, and the opening (filmed in sepia tone) is promising. Unfortunately, the story really doesn't make much sense. Etta, tired of hiding out because of the bounty on her, tells a two-bit robber she's ready to turn herself in, yet he feeds her a lie about Sundance still being alive so that a legendary bounty hunter can capture her. Cheap, slim made-for-TV movie, mostly filmed on Fox's backlot, has a few scenes that work, but Chomsky doesn't fare too well with crowd scenes, and an opening moment where Etta watches her life portrayed on the stage is woefully slack. The picture is also not helped by poor editing and mediocre photography. Katharine Ross played Etta Place in 1969's "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"; she returned to the role in 1976 with the TV-movie, "Wanted: The Sundance Woman".

I'm not ashamed to admit that I spotted this film in the television listings and watched it on the title alone; about six months previously I had seen 'Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid' and been shaken to my core by it in a way that the vast majority of movies never achieve - enough to go and do some serious research into Butch Cassidy and his period. So I came to this picture armed with far more knowledge of the actual period than the average audience at which it was aimed, and mentally braced for a horrid disappointment, yet irresistably drawn by the need to know what had been made of the subject matter I had come to hold so dear.I had probably better say now that, yes, this film *is* total and complete historical hokum. Not only were the events in question never recorded as happening, but major plot points on which the action revolves are contradicted by known historical fact. The famous Tiffany watch worn by Etta Place was indeed a cherished present - from *Cassidy*, not from her lover. And the secret entrance to the hideout at Hole-in-the-Wall had been public knowledge since before Cassidy's time. And yet, somehow, it *doesn't matter*. The name 'Sundance' has nothing to do with dancing sunlight - it was the name of a jail in which the young Harry 'Sundance Kid' Longabaugh was once imprisoned - yet the scene in which Etta describes her lover in such tender terms is in its context somehow right and true.The film purports to chronicle the further tribulations of the schoolteacher Etta Place after the deaths of her lover the Sundance Kid and his partner Butch Cassidy in South America. As history, it is totally unfounded. As fiction, however, I found it unexpectedly enthralling. In fact, I was hoping just as desperately as Etta, halfway through, that what I had been led to believe was false - that history could be rewritten. As a story of constancy and love against all hope, it touched some deep chord in me for which I had not been prepared.Later on, I also watched 'Butch & Sundance: the Early Years'. While I believe the latter film is generally more highly-rated, and certainly much better-known, I found 'Mrs Sundance' infinitely superior. I cared about this film; I felt nothing for 'The Early Years'. As a sequel, it is 'Mrs Sundance' that recaptures the potent blend of humour, desperation and loyalties that has made its predecessor so rightly renowned.I rated this film at a 6, because that is all I can honestly say that it deserves as a piece of work in its own right. On my personal scale of enjoyment I have to confess that it is probably up there on an 8, 9 or even 10.