Paint Your Wagon (1969)

A musical with Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin. This is generally regarded as "ill-advised" – Hardy's Encyclopedia of Westerns is very scathing about it, and The Simpsons did an enjoyable parody. However, I found it to be pretty entertaining and not nearly as a bad as advertised.

The plot—thin though it is—concerns a California Gold mining camp where prospectors Ben Rumson (Marvin) and "Pardner" (Eastwood) are working. The camp is suffering from a shortage of women, and so Rumson buys a wife (Jean Seberg) from a passing Mormon. Subsequently the townsfolk "divert" a stagecoach of "French tarts". "Pardner" falls in love with Rumson's wife, so they live as a threesome for a bit. The arrival of some respectable citizens makes that challenging.

I'm not hugely qualified to judge the musical side of it, but Eastwood can sing OK, Marvin obviously can't sing a bit, and everyone else is obviously hired for their singing ability, or dubbed by someone who can. The songs are generally pretty decent too. I found the comedy bits pretty enjoyable: Eastwood convincing the town they want to kidnap the prostitutes, the preacher who rallies against the town's sinful ways, and the introduction of the respectable son to sin (plus his subsequent discussion of it) all stand out.

However, the film is clearly too long, both for the plot, which does drag a bit and take a long time to resolve the one real question of who the girl's going to stay with, and for the number of songs. I think it's still worth watching though.

The available (UK) DVD looks decent, and shows off some nice looking actual location shooting (unlike many of the Western themed musicals of the '50s, which are mostly clearly shot in studios).