There's a good reason for the exclamation point in the title of "McLintock!": the entire film is uncomplicated, bold, and unapologetic to the core. This retelling of "The Taming of the Shrew" set in the old west serves mostly as a star vehicle for one of the great screen pairings of all time, John Wayne & Maureen O'Hara. But its main appeal is as a warm, reactionary blanket.
Adherents of this film will undoubtedly cite it as "good, wholesome entertainment" and state "they don't make 'em like they used to." They'd also mock my use of the word "adherents". It's because this movie was designed to appeal to our more conservative values. In McLintock men settle their differences with bare fists, and women secretly thrill over it. Bureaucrats and intellectuals are untrustworthy, because the only good, clean, honest work is done with your hands. Here women need to be paddled to know their place, and they won't respect you until you do. In this town cowards and "fancy boys" don't get the girl, and stereotypes are all in good fun (and true!). For many westerns most of this is implied, but in McLintock! it's the driving theme.
It may seem like I am knocking this movie, but I am really not. It is what it is: a chance to see John Wayne at his best, as an uncomplicated character whose adherence (that word again!) to his convictions sees him through all troubles, be they internal or external. And the entire effort is well-directed and entertaining, regardless of one's social compass. Yet I would remind anyone who feels this movie is "wholesome" that Running Buffalo's "Where's the whiskey?" line, delivered about a dozen times, probably set Native American relations back 100 years. And I would further remind anyone deriding my "political correctness" that McLintock! itself contains one of the most blatant PC moments in film. The only point of the subplot involving the local Comanche tribe is to show John Wayne, an American icon symbolic of our old west heritage, as sympathetic to the Native American cause. And the only point of that is to serve Wayne's legacy – a man who built his screen career on fighting Indians – and to allay our white conscience.
If McLintock really cared about the Native Americans, he'd give his land back to them and not some national park. And if the filmmakers really cared about them, the actors would have received some kind of screen credit.
Adherents of this film will undoubtedly cite it as "good, wholesome entertainment" and state "they don't make 'em like they used to." They'd also mock my use of the word "adherents". It's because this movie was designed to appeal to our more conservative values. In McLintock men settle their differences with bare fists, and women secretly thrill over it. Bureaucrats and intellectuals are untrustworthy, because the only good, clean, honest work is done with your hands. Here women need to be paddled to know their place, and they won't respect you until you do. In this town cowards and "fancy boys" don't get the girl, and stereotypes are all in good fun (and true!). For many westerns most of this is implied, but in McLintock! it's the driving theme.
It may seem like I am knocking this movie, but I am really not. It is what it is: a chance to see John Wayne at his best, as an uncomplicated character whose adherence (that word again!) to his convictions sees him through all troubles, be they internal or external. And the entire effort is well-directed and entertaining, regardless of one's social compass. Yet I would remind anyone who feels this movie is "wholesome" that Running Buffalo's "Where's the whiskey?" line, delivered about a dozen times, probably set Native American relations back 100 years. And I would further remind anyone deriding my "political correctness" that McLintock! itself contains one of the most blatant PC moments in film. The only point of the subplot involving the local Comanche tribe is to show John Wayne, an American icon symbolic of our old west heritage, as sympathetic to the Native American cause. And the only point of that is to serve Wayne's legacy – a man who built his screen career on fighting Indians – and to allay our white conscience.
If McLintock really cared about the Native Americans, he'd give his land back to them and not some national park. And if the filmmakers really cared about them, the actors would have received some kind of screen credit.