While this CBS-TV miniseries from the novel by Larry McMurtry lacks the classical simplicity of his Lonesome Dove adaptation, it is nonetheless a sensitively-directed feminist oater that commands attention despite slow patches. The production often whisks through essentials only to dawdle
over sidebars or scenery.
As the Wild West grows tame enough to be a fit subject for mythologizing by Buffalo Bill Cody (Peter Coyote), a few weather-beaten survivors yearn for the rough-and-tumble past. Flanked by her querulous trapper buddies Bartle Bone (Jack Palance) and Jim Ragg (Tracey Walter) and Indian shaman pal
No Ears (Floyd Red Crow Westerman), Calamity Jane (Anjelica Huston) frees herself fortuitously from a job commitment to General Custer, right before his famous Last Stand. Surrendering to her ardor for smoothie Wild Bill Hickock (Sam Elliot, onscreen only briefly), Calamity not only becomes
pregnant but bereaved when Hickock is gunned down. Befriended by madame Dora (Melanie Griffith), who keeps her rancher beau Teddy Blue (Gabriel Byrne) at arm's length, Calamity relinquishes her illegitimate daughter to childless aristocrats, who later move back to England. During the Indian
migrations, as civilization encroaches on all the rowdy frontiersmen, Teddy Blue runs out of patience and gets hitched to a chief's daughter--but continues to see Dora on the side. Bartle Bone and Jim Ragg forsake stubborn pride to join Buffalo Bill's London-bound Wild West Show, and Calamity
signs on in hopes of reclaiming her daughter from the now-widowed, now-antagonistic stepfather. Frustrated Calamity persuades Bill Cody's star attraction Annie Oakley (Reba McEntire) to hold a clay-pigeon shooting match to raise funds for a custody fight. But after meeting and befriending the
happy child, Jane decides to return home alone, without even telling her of her true parentage--except in long letters, which have comprised the saga's voiceover narration. Meanwhile Dora expires in childbirth after an impulsive marriage to a young husband (that did little to prevent regular
trysts with Blue). Calamity Jane pours her unfulfilled maternal feelings into helping raise Dora's baby daughter.
Buttressed by sturdy production values and performances that invest legendary figures with human dimensions, BUFFALO GIRLS cast a long shadow as it traipses through a cavalcade of familiar historical events. In this teleplay's E.L Doctorow approach, history seems to exist merely to provide a
backdrop for tragic love affairs and yearning for Days Gone By. Given this superficial streak, an oft-syrupy musical score, and the awkward narrative device of (undelivered?) missives to an oblivious daughter (a Calamity Jane TV biopic starring Jane Alexander used a similar framework device to
better effect), BUFFALO GIRLS still captures a bygone piece of Americana and even tempts the tear ducts to let loose on occasion.
Though her accent varies, Huston makes a magnificent heroine, limning both Jane's sheltered heart, tomboy looks and adventurous spirit. Palance and Walter overemphasize comic patter at the expense of their grizzled squabblers' pathos (and suffer an eco-correct subplot about the Dakota terrority's
dwindled beaver populace), but Griffith and Byrne are exceptionally moving as romantics who pine longingly for each other but never maritally connect; these two need to be at the top their form because the script never fortifies their rather skimpy aversions to wedlock. Although BUFFALO GIRLS is
designed too insistently as an elegy to a vanished epoch, it commendably portrays Native American culture without condescension (Russell Means' Sitting Bull is actually a bad guy, bucking Hollywood's penchant for trendy revisionism). It also creams off the essence of the rhinestone splendor of
Cody's carnival. The Wild West Show doesn't rip off its aging heroes but admiringly gussies them up for a final bow at glory. Even though the screenplay might have more deeply penetrated its characters' inner lives, BUFFALO GIRLS gets credit for insisting its female protagonists ride the range
without side saddles. Calam, Dora, and Annie aren't victims mortified by sagebrush soap opera, but architects of their own destinies who refuse to be backed into any corners of a Man's World. (Violence, profanity, sexual situations, adult situations, substance abuse.) leave a comment