Am I Missing Something?

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Like Young Guns II where a heavily made up Emilio Estevez as desert rat Brushy Bill Roberts reveals to an interviewer he's really Billy the Kid who didn't die at the hands of Pat Garrett, Outlaw Trail has the proposition that Butch Cassidy didn't meet his end in Bolivia with the Sundance Kid. His legacy has been a heavy load for his family to bear, particularly a surviving brother played by James Gammon in Utah of 1951.For reasons that are not really explained young Ryan Kelley thinks that grand uncle Butch survived and left a lot of buried loot in the legendary Robber's Roost, hideout for the Hole-in-the-Wall gang. James Gammon who is his grandfather discourages that belief rather firmly. But when some thieves loot an excavation site that contains clues to the treasure young Ryan is more determined than ever.He and Boy Scout buddy James D. Hardy are determined to find said treasure ahead of the thieves. Along for the ride reluctantly are Arielle Kebbel and another Boy Scout Brent Weber who is his rival for Kebbel and son of the local mayor. Outlaw Trail proves one proposition, that out on the frontier Boy Scout training comes in remarkably handy. At various points in the film the Scouts are trailing the crooks and vice versa. And the law is trailing both as the kids are now missing persons.Young Ryan Kelley gives a sincere and deeply felt performance. And the rest of the cast backs him up admirably. Outlaw Trail is a good family film that kids of all ages should enjoy.

It takes forever and a day to get going but once this family-friendly adventure makes it to the adventure part, Outlaw Trail isn't a bad little film. It's got a nice quartet of young actors as kid heroes and some quality veterans like James Gammon and Bruce McGill backing them up. The action scenes here are fairly low adrenaline but there's lots of workable humor and the wholesome bits of the story are about as non-cloying as you get with this sort of thing. It also has far too many characters, the sign of a script that needed another rewrite or two. Arielle Kebbel is cute as the dickens but the middle of the movie hangs on a suspension of disbelief that's bigger than the Grand Canyon. It's really the sort of film that's six of one, half a dozen of the other. It's good enough that adults won't cringe at it while not being good enough to make any adult want to sit through it.In the early 1950s Utah, young Roy Parker (Ryan Kelley) uncovers a plot by the local museum curator (Bruce McGill) to seek out the hidden treasure of Butch Cassidy, who was actually Roy's black sheep of an grand-uncle. The secret is a map engraved on Roy's belt buckle, so joined by his best friend Jess (Dan Byrd), his buffoonish rival Martin (Brent Weber) and the new girl in town Ellie (Arielle Kebbel), Roy races to find his uncle's lost lair and the South American gold it may contain.The biggest problem with Outlaw Trail is that the whole "chase for the gold" thing doesn't get underway until the film is almost halfway over. Before that, the story wallows in the conflict between Roy's admiration for "Uncle Butch" and the disapproval of Roy's grandfather (James Gammon), who never forgave his brother for turning to a life of Wild West crime. It's not claw your eyes out awful. It just goes on and on and on and the presence of Roy's mother (Shauna Thompson) prevents Roy and his grandfather from having enough interaction to make the conflict more than manufactured. Her part and, frankly, the role of Martin should have been excised. They're not terrible but that's screen time that should have gone to other, more essential characters and their relationships.The middle of Outlaw Trail needed some significant reworking as well. Roy and company have to get to the gold before the curator and his thugs. The kids, however, are on foot and the curator has a car. There's a line about how the kids are cutting through a valley that the curator has to drive around, but come on! Unless he drove his car into the Bermuda Triangle, the curator was going to get where he was going hours before Roy.Ryan Kelley is Perfectly Acceptable in a generic hero role. Brent Weber and Dan Byrd are capable comic relief. Kebbel isn't just adorable, she more than adequately fills the teen love interest role. Bruce McGill does a good job walking that like of being a bad guy in a kid-oriented flick where you have to be believable as a child's version of evil. There's really nobody in the cast who doesn't carry their end of the show.Outlaw Trail was an okay time that would have been much better it had been sleeker and got to the good stuff in its script faster. If you're looking for something to watch with your pre-teen kids, you can do much worse than this.

This is a real wonderful "B" movie that has heart. Think Hardy boys. It is a simple, but very entertaining film won't cost you your soul or sleep. It will fire up your children's imaginations to explore and create. Don't shy away from it, it is worth every minute just for the fun factor. It has Love, bad guys, good guys, planes, trains, drama, small town folks, mountains, boy scouts, old cars and trucks, horses, history and friendship. It is a simple story that boys and girls will love with old school values and painful hidden family memories. Thoughtfully done, with great locations and somewhat campy story line that draws form the 1950's, it is wonderful entertainment that you should not miss.

I am a judge for the Indianapolis-based Heartland Film Festival. This feature film is a Crystal Heart Award Winner and is eligible to be the Grand Prize Winner in October of 2006. The Heartland Film Festival is a non-profit organization that honors Truly Moving Pictures. A Truly Moving Picture "…explores the human journey by artistically expressing hope and respect for the positive values of life."Remember the ending of the film, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", when Paul Newman and Robert Redford are in Bolivia and they rush out the front door to escape many armed government troops? The story ends there and we just assumed that Butch and Sundance died and we were spared the gore."Outlaw Trail" assumes that Butch didn't die and in fact came back to his home in the West to make amends for his life of crime. Or, at least that is what Roy Parker thinks. Roy Parker is a teenage boy whose great uncle was Leroy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy. It's 1951 and Roy lives in the same town as all the Parkers have lived, and Butch Cassidy has always been a major embarrassment to the family.Roy is out to prove everyone is wrong about Butch Cassidy and he inadvertently gets help from the evil local museum director and his two criminal cohorts who Roy spots stealing artifacts from an old mining site. These three criminals are after the treasure that Butch Cassidy may have hidden and revealed in a map that is part of these stolen artifacts. But Roy is just out to clear his family name.Roy and three friends alternately are chased by the three bad guys or chase the three bad guys in a plot that twists and turns all over Wyoming. The film plays like "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It is complicated, full of adventure, farcical at times, and relentlessly entertaining.But ultimately it is a story about Roy looking for the good in someone that was always thought of as an outlaw. It's Roy's faith in his family's goodness that drives the story, and relying on this faith, Roy displays courage and heroism far beyond his age and experience in life.FYI – There is a Truly Moving Pictures web site where there is a listing of past Crystal Heart Award winners as well as other Truly Moving Picture Award winners that are now either at the theater or available on video.