Wooly Boys DVD Review:

With the very few PG rated live action films available, it is always a big deal when one of them is actually decent. Had Wooly Boys been widely released in theaters, it may or may not have received this attention. Although Wooly Boys is far better than many other films, it is largely due to the expert acting of two fantastic veterans of film. Sadly, the script never seems to reach the same level that they achieve just by showing up.
Stoney and his ranch hand Shuck, played by Peter Fonda and Kris Kristofferson, are sheep herders in the Badlands. They don’t have a phone and they have minimal contact with the outside world, but each year on his birthday, Stoney receives a card from his daughter. When the card doesn’t arrive one year, Stoney thinks that she must be in trouble and he picks up and leaves for Minneapolis. When he gets there, he finds that it was all a trick to get him into a hospital for a check-up. As soon as Shuck finds out, he follows Stoney and breaks him out of the hospital, taking Stoney’s grandson with them. Traveling by hearse, the three of them find their way back to the ranch, with the FBI close on their tail.

Wooly Boys is part quirky comedy, part heartwarming drama, and part action/adventure, but the problem with the film is never the blending of the genres. The problem is that none of them are extremely good. There are supporting players who carry silly comedic roles, which is one of the worst parts of the movie, mostly because it doesn’t have Kristofferson and Fonda to fall back onto.

Fonda and Kristofferson are far too good for a film of this caliber, but at the same time they seem to be made for the roles. They play off of each other like two cantankerous old men who know everything about each other and have no problem using insults as a form of intimacy. Even when the film turns a bit sappy, these two manage to keep it above water, if only barely.

Ryan Izay