Monday, February 27, 2017

80's Month Day 27: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas


Well, '80's Month' is quickly coming to a close and today's movie is 1982's The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The film is based on a stage play of the same name (which I've never seen so I won't attempt to compare the two), and it's a bit of an odd but fun movie. 
 
The movie is about a whorehouse in Texas (as the title would suggest) which has been nicknamed the "Chicken Ranch". The Chicken Ranch, which has been a fixture in the community for years, is run by a woman named Mona (played by Dolly Parton) who just wants to run a nice establishment. She's involved with the town Sheriff, Ed Earl Dodd (played by Burt Reynolds) which only complicates matters later in the film. There are a few musical numbers in the movie and, while they're not those sort of stuck in your head all day tunes, some of them are pretty entertaining. The Sneakin' Around sequence in particular is a lot of fun. 

Well, despite this local brothel never causing any trouble and being generally excepted by the community, a "watchdog" reporter named Melvin P. Thorpe (played by Dom DeLuise) aims to rid Texas of this immoral establishment. Eventually, after butting heads with the Sheriff on numerous occasions, Thorpe does get what he wants in the end and the Chicken Ranch is shut down. This isn't one of the funniest Dom DeLuise roles, but I don't think it's really supposed to be. A lot of the funniest lines actually come from Ed Earl's Deputy (played by Jim Nabors).

Overall, if you like Burt Reynolds, Dolly Parton and the occasional musical number, then you'll probably have a good time with this one. I really like the movie, but I wouldn't call it any sort of masterpiece. It's one of those rare films that I'm really not sure how good it is but, I enjoy it. 
So, a 3.5 out of 5 seems like a fair rating.


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