Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

A good TV film. The main characteristic is typical of TV films or mini-series. It is slightly too slow and it concentrates too much on close up shots of characters or faces, and less on action, vast movements that the TV screen cannot capture. The story itself is based on the life of Bill Hicock and Calamity Jane, and of course Buffalo Bill. You can find them in Cody, South Dakota, with the Buffalo Bill museum, but also the Colt Museum and the Indian village Museum. You can visit the reconstituted western village composed of all cabins and houses recuperated everywhere in the west, and of course the cemetery with the tombs of Bill Hicock and Calamity Jane and a few others. You also have the rodeo ground and the old western saloon where some wild cowboys regularly organize some real true false holdups and gunfights in the street. This film is a commemoration of this period when the wild west turned into the not so wild west and pretty soon the no longer wild west. The film is trying to show this period and these characters from inside their psyches and it is pretty sure not to become over-sentimental. But it provides us with a picture of that wild west that is rather interesting and definitely human. The other side of the traditional western films with the guns, the fights, and the dishonest settlers or exploiters of settlers. And it is good to have that other vision, particularly with the women, and why they came to the west. But also the nostalgia that inhabited the minds of the pioneers, the trappers, the hunters and also, but far behind in this film, the Indians who were seeing a mode of living, a life style disappearing, and themselves along with it. The shortcoming at this level is that it did not explain enough the new world that was coming out of it, that was emerging.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Impressive script that gets the gist out of a big book and renders a lot of the main plot points with simple scenes. Favotites were the simple way they presented the gift of NoEars with his wax ears from Calamity. In the book I believe that was all NoEars initiative that made that happen. But this is a movie and Calamity giving that gift made it very touching. Jim Rag's love of beaver is also very simply portrayed. And I guess it is really ultimately smart to deviate completely from the main revelation of the book. Now this is really a spoiler for the book but I want you warned. Do not proceed if you haven't read the book because it is a great book. Calamity Jane in the movie is an actual mother with a child she will meet in heart wrenching scenes. In the book, most of the story is told with letters to "Janey". Letters to Janey are just a way for sad Calamity Jane to talk to someone that she feels would understand her. Janey never was. At the end, sad Calamity Jane has no one and we learn she has created this imaginary daughter and an imaginary romance with Wild Bill. A hard thing to put over with the same emotional depth the movie gets with an actual daughter. That bugged me a bit, but I got over it. It's no Lonesome Dove but it's a great film of characters that are shaped by their common love of the early American adventure.

I watched 'Buffalo Girls' because of the Larry McMurtry 'Lonesome Dove' connection. With a cast of the calibre of this offering this TV movie could have been remarkable, but this books' translation to the screen just kept making me wince. Everyone in this sadly average offering seemed to be working on auto pilot and I can only put it down to schmaltzy dialogue that followed the letter of the novel but not the spirit.I've seen Angelica Houston in a lot of things and enjoyed her in every one.... except this one. I wish I'd never seen it.Sorry

Excellent script, it would be good to see this kind of class transposed to very expensive movies, and sorry about this but has anyone considered setting Buffalo Girls in stardate 56/24/17? Will it work? It would be interesting.