A Maverick heads to the big screen

Deep, philosophical and thematically resonant "Support Your Local Sheriff" is not. But entertaining and crowd-pleasing it certainly is, and there's no shame in that. This film riffs on virtually every western movie trope you can think of--short of adopting an irreverent fourth wall-breaking "Blazing Saddles" approach--and still manages to leave 'em laughing, despite its predictable plot and pedestrian direction. Here's our CineVerse group's collective take on this late sixties genre comedy:

WHAT CLICHES AND CONVENTIONS OF THE WESTERN GENRE DOES SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF PLAY WITH?

• The high noon showdown

• The lone brave deadeye pitted against multiple villains

• A colorful but dense deputy

• A feisty female love interest

• Cowardly townspeople

• Public brawls and fistfights 

• A band of familial bad guys led by an older patriarch

• An attempted jailbreak

• A shootout finale

THIS FILM BRINGS THESE OTHER MOVIES AND TV SHOWS TO MIND:

• Its sequel, Support Your Local Gunfighter

• Maverick and The Andy Griffith Show

• Skin Game

• My Darling Clementine, also starring Walter Brennan

• Treasure of the Sierra Madre

• Westerns where an outsider or lone protagonist helps to bring law and order to a wild frontier town—including Destry Rides Again, High Noon, Shane, Rango and others 

• Paint Your Wagon, Cat Ballou and El Dorado, earlier spoofs of the western genre

• Blazing Saddles, a later parody of the western genre

WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE WAS DIFFERENT, UNEXPECTED OR MEMORABLE ABOUT THIS FILM?

• The cast is filled with fan favorite character actors and familiar faces, including Jack Elam, Harry Morgan, Walter Brennan, Bruce Dern, Henry Jones, Walter Burke and Willis Bouchey.

• It can feel like a made-for-TV movie that draws direct influence from the editing and beats of TV sitcoms and westerns of the time. Roger Ebert, who wasn’t a fan, suggested that this picture “is a textbook example of the evil influence TV has on the movies. It’s essentially a lousy TV situation comedy dragged out to feature length.”

OTHER MOVIES DIRECTED BY BURT KENNEDY

• The Train Robbers

• The War Wagon

• Support Your Local Gunfighter