Watch With the Kids
The Pitch
In an Old West frontier town, no one wants three orphaned children. Not until they strike gold.
Age Recommendations
Content Advisories
The women and Asians come off as well as you’d expect for a 1975 Disney Western. Expect slapstick and bad ideas every time Knotts and Conway appear. Do you remember how loud television-style Old West shootouts could get? Hundreds of gunshots, stuntmen falling off buildings and crashing through windows. My kid had never seen anything like it on PBS Kids. In the end it turns out all independent frontierswoman Dusty ever wanted was a good man to marry.
Your rear end’s on fire, Theodore.
What was remarkable about the comedic teaming of Don Knotts and Tim Conway (this was their first film together) was that it put the hapless Knotts in the position of being the brains of the operation. Here they provided supporting comic relief, but were so popular that they headlined the sequel. (It helps that the central story of gambler-with-a-heart-of-gold Bill Bixby is so completely unmemorable.) Every moment Harry Morgan is on screen will remind you what made him a g@#$%mn national treasure. —