McLintock! (1963)

(On Cable TV, May 2020) Considering how little I like John Wayne either as an actor or as a personality, my less-than-impressed reaction to McLintock! is entirely predictable. Wayne isn’t good enough of an actor to play comedy, especially slapstick comedy, and finding that he had much to do in imposing the film’s more retrograde aspects (which includes spanking the heroine for her independence and also for the audience’s laughter) certainly did me no favours. Wayne (whose company produced the film) finds himself irresistible as a fanny-spanking straight-talk anti-government mildly-idiotic protagonist, and thinks that the height of humour is pushing people down a muddy slide. Sure, there’s Maureen O’Hara as a Technicolor redhead that’s worth watching… but overlong McLintock! gets worse every moment that Wayne is on-screen. I’m sure that your enjoyment of the film will be higher if you actually like racist misogynistic Wayne… but why?