Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

dromasca Viewers looking for a classic western risk to be disappointed by this movie. It's not that shotgun duels are missing completely, but this film is not about shotgun duels. Most disappointed will certainly be action movies fans if they happen to see this film, as the pace is slow and the emphasize is on something else. Director Maggie Greenwald focused here on the life of women in the West, and on the possibility of leading an alternative style of life during that period.The result is a different type of movie, different in subject, style and pace than you would expect. The title says it all maybe, the film is a ballad in the sense that it focuses on the hero - in this case a woman thrown out from her Eastern rich environment, running away, and choosing to live all her life in disguise as a man. Was this possible? Probably so, as the film is said to be inspired by a true story.There is some fine acting especially from Suzy Amis which sustains the film, and also a very closely and carefully rendition of details of the day-to-day life in the epoch. However this is not enough to maintain interest for the full duration of the two hours, some of the characters seem too remote and too hard to read missing the chance to involve the viewer in becoming interested in their destinies. Maybe the director kept intentionally the distance and did not want to reveal too much of their secrets, same as the folks around Little Jo did not push too much to be able to understand her real secret. The result is that a film which could shock and involve by presenting the continuity of the harsh realities of the status of women and other minorities all over the American history fails to do so completely.It is still worth watching, especially as the end brings at least part of that dose of sharpness and weirdness missing in much of the rest of the movie. I am however wondering where talents like director Maggie Greenwald and actress Suzy Amis disappeared in the fifteen years that passed since this film was released.

ozman I really liked this film. I've been around enough real cowboys and stockmen to know that a woman could successfully masquerade as a slender, somewhat pretty young man. Especially if she deliberately gives herself a disfiguring scar (an old trick to discourage people from looking closely at your face). It was clear in the film that many of Jo's fellow miners and stockmen felt that she was a bit effeminate and, as Frank Badger puts it, "peculiar".But being peculiar wasn't a crime and a small man who kept to himself on a remote ranch, didn't bother other men, and made an honest living in the hardscrabble world of livestock ranching probably wouldn't have been subject to close scrutiny. Plus, Jo went armed and it was always dicey to make trouble for an armed man. And, once Jo has saved Frank's life and killed two ambushers, her status as a man would have been pretty well assured.I felt the final scene where Frank Badger is angrily smashing Jo's cabin furnishings was revelatory. I think Frank was angry that he never found out that his friend (for whom he had feelings he couldn't understand or acknowledge) was really a good-looking woman with whom he could have had a more intimate friendship without compromising his heterosexuality.

deflepmorgan I screened this movie in a film class and was horrified by the violence towards women. I am shocked to learn here that it was written and directed by a woman. The acting was horrible and, with the exception of Carrie Snodgrass whom I adore, this movie is a waste of time unless you enjoy watching women portrayed solely as whores and victims of violence. I am now convinced that my film teacher is a sadist. In one of the most disturbing scenes a pimp visits the mining camp with a prostitute who is deaf and dumb. All of the men in the town take turns with her until one of them assaults her because, "she wouldn't put it in her mouth." The prostitute is bleeding from the mouth and is moaning and crying as the man who assaults her (played by a very convincingly digusting Ian McKellan) is bleeding from the crotch of his long underwear. This movie disgusted me over and over.

bob the moo Cast out of her rich family home for having a child out of marriage, Josephine takes the road in the new west of America. When she is attacked and nearly raped by outlaws she goes into hiding, disguising herself as a man. Jo settles into a small mining town under her new identity but can she keep the charade up?Based on a true story this film is a reasonably worthy story of one woman's life in the old west as a man. How close to the referenced `true story' this is, is beyond me, but I don't think it was that important as the tale stands up for itself without mattering how true it was. However, the actual delivery of the story here is all a little bit dull for my tastes. The lack of actual story beyond the `woman dressed as man' shows through, and instead we have (probably fictional) episodes from Jo's life – the captions `months later' and `several years later' pop up at random breaking up any sort of narrative flow.As a result I never really got into the film and it just didn't have a drive to it. The one line summary is worthy enough but it still needed to tell me a story and not just expect me to sit and go `wow, she lived as a man' all the way through the film. Put simply, far too little happened of interest and it all took too long to tell.The cast is not great and fit with the inconsequentialness of the whole film. Amis is a bit bland in her delivery and her lines sound flat, in fairness she was trying to sound like a man but even still! Her looks are also a problem. Amis is a very pretty woman and it is hard to make her look like someone who could be taken for a man, a less feminine actress would have been a better choice for the role as it would have made it easier for the audience to suspend belief. McKellen is good but all too brief, Hopkins is an enjoyable character but has little to do, Chung is actually quite good and Heather Graham has a fleeting early role.Overall the story is worth hearing but only as a few page story. As a two hour movie it drags and finds that it doesn't actually have much to say or do after the pitch is delivered. It drags through little scenes and dramas but overall comes out as just a little dull – something more dramatic was required but is sadly absent.