Whatever the reason for making Wooly Boys was, it seems to be entirely tenuous and impossible to discern. It isn’t very clear why anyone thought this would be a good idea for the story, not because it is controversial or looks at questionable subject matter – it just simply doesn’t have any real narrative, and its entire structure is so different from anything even vaguely resembling a good film. Its not even a case of wondering how it managed to dismantle narrative structure so much that it becomes experimental – it is quite simply just a film that lacks precision or a clear sense of direction, and its one of those instances where we can’t even blame the director or writer for the lacklustre work, because they seem to have given up midway themselves, likely realizing that what they were making, as supposedly charming as it may be, was not much more than a mildly entertaining work, one that is driven entirely by conventions, to the point where the first-time viewer can predict every narrative beat and plot element that makes up this film, which is not all that endearing after the novelty wears off, and we see that beneath the surface lurks a cripplingly conventional story, one built on the hopes that the viewer isn’t actively interested in the plot enough to realize how hopelessly obvious everything is, which is an unfair expectation on the audience, who ultimately walks away from this film more ambivalent (and perhaps even confused) than before, since Wooly Boys makes very little impression, both formally and metaphorically, being as plain and earthy as the characters that form its foundation, and almost just as elegant.

Wooly Boys has many flaws, but they’re not even interesting enough to draw our attention or make us wonder how this could have been better with slightly more work – and a sign of a true misfire of a film comes when we look at it, acknowledge how deeply flawed it is, but fail to envision any potential solutions for what could have been done better, which is never a good sign. This is a film composed of bad omens – on a purely narrative level, the fact that the main character stands on death’s door and has moments where it feels like he has finally succumbed to his illness (which he didn’t even notice he had until being forced to visit a doctor – suddenly know that he knows he is terminal, his entire existence revolves around his inability to function as well as he did the day before, one of several strange plot details that simply doesn’t make any sense) is bad enough, but becomes even worse when it’s the entire concept around which the film orbits. On a more technical level, the fact that this film was written by a team of half a dozen screenwriters did not bode well, especially for a story as simple and conventional as this. The dialogue is hackneyed and forced, and the overall structure is pure. Leszek Burzynski was not a seasoned filmmaker in any capacity, but he has something of a jack-of-all-trades, working in various positions over time, and thus earning quite an interesting look at how the industry functions – so it’s bizarre that, even when helming a film as simple as this, it just never feels like it has established any clear motivation for its existence – and while an artist never should be impelled to justify their reasons for creation, there was clearly something about this film that the director and his collaborators felt was worthwhile – but they conveniently forget to tell the viewer, who has to scramble to understand this dense and poorly-written plot, which is about as far from insightful and nuanced as a film like this can get, which is unfortunate considering the overall nature of the story.

The biggest issue that we find throughout Wooly Boys is quite simply that we never know where this film intended to take us, and the complete lack of authenticity also strikes a substantial blow, especially since this is a film about meaningful human connections. It often feels like the screenwriters decided to see just how many cliches they could throw into this already unsightly and convoluted script, and the extent to which the story can draw on these cliches in a way that covers up the clear narrative flaws, giving off the illusion that everything was intentional, rather than just being a work of forthright laziness, and a complete lack of any interest in developing the story to have much meaning, which is inexcusable in a film that proposes to be a charming comedy about a farmer and his grandson entering into terrain new to each of them (urban areas and more rural parts of the country, respectively) and finding their way through these new worlds in the hopes of building on a bond that was already quite tenuous to begin with. Wooly Boys feels like a parody of what someone from outside the country would create as their depiction of what American culture is, and considering all the screenwriters were American, the fact that every frame seems to exist to showcase the one-dimensional perspective on the culture of the United States not only does a disservice to this film, but to all that aimed to celebrate American traditions, which here are shown to be weak, uninteresting and simply just not that intriguing. It also doesn’t help that no one in this film seemed to have any idea on how to handle emotions, every scene being driven by the wacky, melodramatic hysterics that forces this film to play like a hackneyed soap opera, rather than a moving film about family and friendship.

One would at least assume a cast composed of relatively strong actors would counteract the incompetence of the writing and directing, but this is only true to a point, after which it becomes an exercise in testing not only our patience, but the goodwill brought by the cast, who deserved much better than this. Peter Fonda may not have always gotten the best roles later on in life (always being the vaguely sinister counterpart to some of his contemporaries, who had the lion’s share when it came to more interesting roles), but he certainly wasn’t at a point where something like Wooly Boys felt like a good decision for him to make. It isn’t even a matter of him being bad in the film (taken on an individual basis, there’s very little actually bad about the film, with most of its elements just being badly composed and entirely undercooked), but rather that he simply does not do anything valuable – in fact, it seems almost insulting for an actor of his stature and talent to spend a considerable majority of this film horizontal, writhing in pain and gradually deteriorating, which this film thinks is a good way to hammer in the message of the importance of family. Far too much of the heavy lifting is done by Kris Kristofferson, who gives a heartwarming but slight performance as the main character’s best friend and his quirky voice of reason, an endearing old coot who is best described as Walter Huston’s character in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre had he been present at a few evangelical sermons. Not even the wonderful Keith Carradine (who is somehow credited as his brother David Carradine in promotional material for this film) is able to save the film, which is one of the most blatant examples of the belief that a star-studded cast of lovable veteran actors is enough to attract audiences in, and where nothing valuable needs to be said or done, since viewers will enjoy these performances regardless – and nothing could be further from the truth, as we see throughout this film.

There are many less-than-ideal qualities a film can have without feeling like a failure, but one that should be avoided at all costs is the combination between being both safe and predictable – there is nothing inherently wrong with reliability, and a film can easily achieve a decent level of success, granted it understands the plot details. Wooly Boys, despite its good intentions, doesn’t do anything like this, and instead approaches its central ideas without actually engaging with them. This is not a total disaster, since it is far too harmless and lightweight to make any real difference – but it does become a chore to get through, especially when there was a lot of potential, which would have been realized had this film been made by a director who understands all the details that need to go into even the most simple comedies. The presence of famous actors and the promise of hilarity with a healthy dose of melancholy is not enough to save this film, especially when the actors are wasted and the story is too aimless to actually make much of an impact. As a whole, Wooly Boys is a misfire, a film that thinks it is far funnier than it is, and contains a moving story, when in reality it is nothing but a limp, vaguely amusing series of misadventures by poorly-constructed characters in a narrative that is seemingly detached from reality, enough to feel like it is entirely undeserving of our time, leading to very clear examples of precisely why this film has remained in obscurity for the past two decades.