It takes forever and a day to get going but once this family-friendly adventure makes it to the adventure part, Outlaw Trail isn't a bad little film. It's got a nice quartet of young actors as kid heroes and some quality veterans like James Gammon and Bruce McGill backing them up. The action scenes here are fairly low adrenaline but there's lots of workable humor and the wholesome bits of the story are about as non-cloying as you get with this sort of thing. It also has far too many characters, the sign of a script that needed another rewrite or two. Arielle Kebbel is cute as the dickens but the middle of the movie hangs on a suspension of disbelief that's bigger than the Grand Canyon. It's really the sort of film that's six of one, half a dozen of the other. It's good enough that adults won't cringe at it while not being good enough to make any adult want to sit through it.
In the early 1950s Utah, young Roy Parker (Ryan Kelley) uncovers a plot by the local museum curator (Bruce McGill) to seek out the hidden treasure of Butch Cassidy, who was actually Roy's black sheep of an grand-uncle. The secret is a map engraved on Roy's belt buckle, so joined by his best friend Jess (Dan Byrd), his buffoonish rival Martin (Brent Weber) and the new girl in town Ellie (Arielle Kebbel), Roy races to find his uncle's lost lair and the South American gold it may contain.
The biggest problem with Outlaw Trail is that the whole "chase for the gold" thing doesn't get underway until the film is almost halfway over. Before that, the story wallows in the conflict between Roy's admiration for "Uncle Butch" and the disapproval of Roy's grandfather (James Gammon), who never forgave his brother for turning to a life of Wild West crime. It's not claw your eyes out awful. It just goes on and on and on and the presence of Roy's mother (Shauna Thompson) prevents Roy and his grandfather from having enough interaction to make the conflict more than manufactured. Her part and, frankly, the role of Martin should have been excised. They're not terrible but that's screen time that should have gone to other, more essential characters and their relationships.
The middle of Outlaw Trail needed some significant reworking as well. Roy and company have to get to the gold before the curator and his thugs. The kids, however, are on foot and the curator has a car. There's a line about how the kids are cutting through a valley that the curator has to drive around, but come on! Unless he drove his car into the Bermuda Triangle, the curator was going to get where he was going hours before Roy.
Ryan Kelley is Perfectly Acceptable in a generic hero role. Brent Weber and Dan Byrd are capable comic relief. Kebbel isn't just adorable, she more than adequately fills the teen love interest role. Bruce McGill does a good job walking that like of being a bad guy in a kid-oriented flick where you have to be believable as a child's version of evil. There's really nobody in the cast who doesn't carry their end of the show.
Outlaw Trail was an okay time that would have been much better it had been sleeker and got to the good stuff in its script faster. If you're looking for something to watch with your pre-teen kids, you can do much worse than this.
In the early 1950s Utah, young Roy Parker (Ryan Kelley) uncovers a plot by the local museum curator (Bruce McGill) to seek out the hidden treasure of Butch Cassidy, who was actually Roy's black sheep of an grand-uncle. The secret is a map engraved on Roy's belt buckle, so joined by his best friend Jess (Dan Byrd), his buffoonish rival Martin (Brent Weber) and the new girl in town Ellie (Arielle Kebbel), Roy races to find his uncle's lost lair and the South American gold it may contain.
The biggest problem with Outlaw Trail is that the whole "chase for the gold" thing doesn't get underway until the film is almost halfway over. Before that, the story wallows in the conflict between Roy's admiration for "Uncle Butch" and the disapproval of Roy's grandfather (James Gammon), who never forgave his brother for turning to a life of Wild West crime. It's not claw your eyes out awful. It just goes on and on and on and the presence of Roy's mother (Shauna Thompson) prevents Roy and his grandfather from having enough interaction to make the conflict more than manufactured. Her part and, frankly, the role of Martin should have been excised. They're not terrible but that's screen time that should have gone to other, more essential characters and their relationships.
The middle of Outlaw Trail needed some significant reworking as well. Roy and company have to get to the gold before the curator and his thugs. The kids, however, are on foot and the curator has a car. There's a line about how the kids are cutting through a valley that the curator has to drive around, but come on! Unless he drove his car into the Bermuda Triangle, the curator was going to get where he was going hours before Roy.
Ryan Kelley is Perfectly Acceptable in a generic hero role. Brent Weber and Dan Byrd are capable comic relief. Kebbel isn't just adorable, she more than adequately fills the teen love interest role. Bruce McGill does a good job walking that like of being a bad guy in a kid-oriented flick where you have to be believable as a child's version of evil. There's really nobody in the cast who doesn't carry their end of the show.
Outlaw Trail was an okay time that would have been much better it had been sleeker and got to the good stuff in its script faster. If you're looking for something to watch with your pre-teen kids, you can do much worse than this.