Just so...so bad

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Here's a Roy Rogers western based on a Max Brand magazine story and starring Roy with DALE EVANS, TRIGGER and SHELDON LEONARD as the gambling villain.It's poorly edited in the version shown on TCM with abrupt cuts from scene to scene and fadeouts that reflect the low-budget production values. The choppy editing even extends to the final "The End" credit where the music is suddenly cut off.The story is a trifle with Dale masquerading at the start as a boy when she's a stowaway on a train carrying Roy Rogers and Trigger. GEORGE 'GABBY' HAYES gets her to admit her masquerade and before you know it the plot, with some nice musical interludes, is off on a fast pony express contest that Rogers finally wins--in time for a final musical version of a sprightly number called "Rainbow Over Texas." Roy briefly takes time out to solve the shooting incident in a crowded barroom before the fadeout. It's nothing much, but I'm sure it pleased Roy's fans back in 1946. The very slim plot all takes place within a brisk hour.The Sons of the Pioneers do a nice job on a couple of pleasant western numbers and both Dale and Roy sing their songs with professional ease.

Because this is a Roy Rogers picture no one could or would expect the same kind of sexual ambiguity situation with Dale Evans spending some of the film masquerading as a boy like Katharine Hepburn did in Sylvia Scarlett. At least not for long.Dale's a young heiress from Chicago with a yen to see the place where her wealthy father sprung from, a desire not encouraged by Robert Emmett Keane as her father. She runs away and stows away on a train where her singing idol Roy Rogers is returning to Texas. It just so happens he's returning to the town of Dalrymple named for Dale's family.Dale doesn't spend too much time in drag, Roy's fans were definitely not the kind to appreciate the subtleties of gender bending humor. The action returns to traditional western fare with Sheldon Leonard in an accustomed place as the gambler/villain looking to cash in big on a pony express style relay horse race.Not bad, but a little out of the ordinary for Roy and Dale's fans.