Support Your Local Sheriff (1969)

I was somewhat apathetic to this when I saw it many years ago and upon a recent rewatching I largely still am. It’s pleasant enough but in my view it’s by no means particularly funny, nor does it serve as a particularly incisive view of the Western. The two obvious points of reference are Destry Rides Again and Cat Ballou. The former because it shares a reasonably similar story: a sheriff (in this case James Garner) trying to clean up a town primarily through force of charm. The latter partly because it comes from a similar time period and partly because it’s attempting a similar feel: a light-hearted (rather than outright comedy), gentle comic look at the Western. However, in both cases I didn’t find Support Your Local Sheriff quite hits the mark. On the positive side, all the acting is excellently placed: James Garner is suitably charming, Jack Elam is suitably gruff and dishevelled as the unwilling deputy, and Walter Brennan is the sort of hard-bitten patriarch he’s played many times before. In contrast to my somewhat negative (more neutral really…) view, Hardy’s Encylopedia of Westerns rates this quite highly, as do the voters on IMDB, so it’s quite likely I’m in a minority.