I saw this film for the first time last night on TCM,who were showing Andy Griffith films after his recent death, and was mildly amused. But reading the other reviews here you would have thought that it was much funnier and had more to say about old Hollywood,and B westerns, than it actually did. Although young Jeff Bridges is mildly amusing I don't think I actually laughed out loud once,and his character as written is so obtusely naive it's hard to believe He would ever survive his first experience lost in the desert,much less excel in the film business. The other point of the film seems to be pulling back the curtains on the fact that B western cowboys weren't really cowboys and they couldn't act either. But is this really something that was a hidden conspiracy? It really doesn't have much to say,and it doesn't go anywhere, I kept waiting for it to be better and more interesting,but it never got there.I do think it was worth watching once,but it's not one that I want to watch repeatedly. You can,however,see the glint of Gwyneth Paltrow in Blythe Danners' eye!

This film is pure and timeless gold, as out of character with its time as it is with present times. Jeff Bridges, Alan Arkin, Blythe Danner and Andy Griffith are perfectly cast in a comedy that spoofs both American innocence and American cynicism about that innocence. If "The Great Gatsby" is a classic story of the American Dream gone wrong, "Hearts of the West" is a classic rendering of the American Dream gone right in spite of itself. This film is deceptively artful (e.g., the coherence provided by the leitmotif of the bad guys' increasingly dusty and dented automobile). Its "simplicity" is the "simplicity" of all great comedy, which deals with the essences as well as the particular manifestations of situations. (Moliere would have liked this one!) It's a film that makes you want to rewind it immediately and watch it again.Five minutes into "Hearts of the West," I decided I had to own a copy. Funny, redemptive, and to be watched again and again. The laughs will not stale.What I wonder is this: did Howard Zieff also intend it as a critique of the mindset and films of the mid-seventies? Because it is that.Don't miss this one. It will brighten even the dreariest day!

This is one of the best of 1975 without a lot of heavy issues. It's about innocence and the American Dream with the perfect guy in the lead - a young Jeff Bridges. Alan Arkin is the perfect uptight East Coast director in Hollywood and the lovely Blythe Danner shows qualities that her daughter became famous for. Zieff's film Slither with James Caan is also very much underrated. Andy Griffith is well-cast for only the second time (A Face in the Crowd being the other) and Donald Pleasance is an added treasure, all too briefly. If you're in a normal mood this is the movie for you. A definite 8 out of 10 and nobody's seen it.

The interplay between Jeff Bridges and Andy Griffith alone is well worth the price of admission, but the entire supporting cast gets into the spirit of this film about writing western movies in the early 30's. Fun for the entire family. Richard B. Schull and Anthony James are marvelous as the Mutt & Jeff antecedents of the wet bandits.