HotToastyRag Cat Ballou starts off with Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye singing to the camera, alongside their banjos, telling the audience of the Ballad of Cat Ballou. It's a perfectly adorable way to start the western comedy, and the singers return throughout the film to keep the audience company and sing a reprise or two.Jane Fonda is the title character, the cutest little lady in the Wild West. If you've never seen a Jane Fonda movie, this is a great one to start with. She's so cute, you won't be able to keep yourself from grinning and giggling. While on the train home to her father's ranch in Wyoming, she accidentally helps Michael Callan escape from the sheriff, so when she asks him to stay on at the ranch to help protect her father, he agrees. Her dad, John Marley, is dodging a hired gunman, and Jane does her best to hire bodyguards to protect him.Lee Marvin won an extremely undeserved Oscar in 1966 for his dual role in Cat Ballou. He plays both the hit-man hired to kill Marley as well as the drunken gunslinger Jane hires to protect him. Rod Steiger was nominated for The Pawnbroker that year, and once you've seen that performance, you might not ever forgive Lee Marvin for stealing his Oscar.Nevertheless, Cat Ballou is a very cute movie, and a must-see for Jane Fonda fans. She's two tons of cute, and I guarantee you'll be humming the title song long after the credits roll!

SimonJack Two things saved "Cat Balou" from being a washout and box office flop. The ballad-singing duo of Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye, narrate the movie with catchy ballad verses. And Lee Marvin gives a hilarious and frightening Oscar-winning double performance as Kid Shelleen and his bad brother, Strawn. The rest of the cast are fair, but nothing stands out. Jane Fonda is OK as Cat Balou, although she's not very convincing in her serious parts. Michael Callan and Dwayne Hickman are young guys, real tenderfeet and out of place in the West. But, their roles as Clay and Jed don't deliver many laughs.This film may reach a sort of cult following for Marvin's portrayal of the drunken Shelleen. Two scenes will always come to mind from this movie. The first is Marvin's socking and knocking a standing horse to the ground. The second is his and his horse's snoozing as they lean against a building. That and the singing duo raise this film above the level of boredom or ho-hum.

BA_Harrison A pair of banjo plucking street singers (Nat 'King' Cole and Stubby Kaye) recount the ballad of Cat Ballou (Jane Fonda), a sweet young school ma'am who becomes a vengeful outlaw after her father is killed on the orders of greedy city developer Sir Harry Percival (Reginald Denny). Riding into history with Cat are legendary drunken gunslinger Kid Shelleen (Lee Marvin), loyal injun ranch-hand Jackson Two-Bears (Tom Nardini), and a pair of wanted cattle rustlers, Clay Boone (Michael Callan) and his Uncle Jed (Dwayne Hickman).Cat Ballou trades heavily on Fonda's sex kitten appeal, but there's much more to the film than its coquettish star and her heavenly cleavage: the film also benefits from a wonderfully witty screenplay, superb direction from Elliot Silverstein, the amazing vocal talents of Cole and Kaye, and lively performances from all involved, most notably Marvin, who not only plays Kid Shelleen with impeccable comic timing, but also his wicked brother Strawn, a hired killer with a silver nose.There are plenty of memorable moments throughout this enjoyable comedy/western romp, but for my money the standout scenes are a lively barn-dance scene (executed with a single shot!), Kid Shelleen's training montage and his transformation from drunken bum to slick gunslinger, and Cat posing as a Mae West style vamp named Trixie, star Fonda simply oozing va-va-voom in a sexy, spangled dress designed to thrill.

Neil Welch There have been other comedy westerns since Cat Ballou, and I suppose that there were comedy moments in other westerns before, especially musicals. But Cat Ballou was unusual in the way it played so much for laughs within the framework of a traditional western, and also in the way linking narration was provided by an on-screen singing Greek chorus in the shapes of Stubby Kaye and Nat "King" Cole.Jane Fonda does an excellent job as the central character, playing the comedy absolutely straight (as she did so effectively a couple of years later in Barbarella), but the film is totally stolen by Lee Marvin in twin roles. His Tim Strawn is truly sinister (helped enormously by Frank DeVol's superb music cues), but the drunk Kid Shelleen is the part in which he shines: it might well have been written for Marvin, for it plays to all his strengths.This film is great fun.