MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Snowy River’ a Tiresome Sequel

“Return to Snowy River” (citywide) is more likely to bury the Western than revive it. The original, “The Man From Snowy River,” released in 1982, was equally old-fashioned but also good fun and went on to become one of Australia’s biggest box-office hits.

This tiresome sequel makes the mistake of taking the most predictable and threadbare of stories and overwhelming it with great hunks of gorgeous travelogue footage coupled with an incessant, bombastic score that all but blasts the film off the screen.

Three years have passed, and now the ranch hand Jim (Tim Burlinson), “the man from Snowy River,” has acquired a sufficiently large herd of horses for him to feel qualified to claim the hand of his beloved, Jessica (Sigrid Thornton), the beautiful, strong-willed daughter of rancher Harrison (Brian Dennehy, taking over for Kirk Douglas). Alas, the local banker (Rhys McConnochie), who seems to hold the entire community in thrall, will tender a loan so desperately needed by Harrison only if Jessica marries his handsome but surly son (Nicholas Eadie).

Director Geoff Burrowes and co-writer John Dixon (who also wrote the first film’s script) give this familiar frontier predicament an epic-scale treatment that can’t be sustained. About the only thing distinguishing this film from American Westerns is a sharper, nastier sense of class distinctions on the frontier, something the film makers might well have developed further.

Burlinson seems hopelessly bland and Thornton hopelessly locked into her role. The banker and his son are painted as villains of such deep dye it’s a wonder they haven’t been given mustaches to twirl. Dennehy, as splendid an actor as is, seems too young for his decidedly secondary part. What the film desperately needs is Kirk Douglas’ larger-than-life presence as a Western icon.

In any event, movies don’t get much more impersonal than “Return to Snowy River” (rated PG).