It's homespun homily time: TALL TALE may look like a rousing adventure story for the whole family, but it's really a vehicle for the kind of tiresome moral aphorisms that only William Bennett could love: "You can do anything at all, if you just
believe." Young Daniel Hackett (Nick Stahl)
must help save his family's farm from rapacious land-grabbers led by evil J.P. Stiles (Scott Glenn). He finds allies in Pecos Bill (Patrick Swayze), Calamity Jane (Catherine O'Hara), John Henry (Roger Aaron Brown), and Paul Bunyan (Oliver Platt), all of whom figure in the tall tales he's heard
from his dad (Stephen Lang). Modern kids probably don't have the faintest idea who...
Released:
1995
Rated:
PG
Length:
98 mins