Rodeo Girl

This low-budget, independently financed and distributed film suffers from many of the technical and artistic failings that working under such restrictions poses. With the exception of Kevin Sorbo as Duke (he played the lead in the TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys), the actors are largely mediocre to terrible, because good actors often cost money. Every setup for a new scene costs time and money, too, so lighting and staging are generally bad to awful, which affects the viewing experience negatively far more than one might expect. In one scene meant to have emotional impact, Duke proposes to his long-term girlfriend. The words are romantic, but his face is in deep shadow, completely blacking out his expressions as he speaks his heart. When Priscilla practices barrel racing, she rides slowly around the obstacles. Then she somehow comes in third on her first try, riding at four times the speed.

Even worse, the script makes no effort to show how the spoiled, disrespectful Priscilla evolves in only a few short months into a good-natured and decent person. The mother, willing to ship her daughter off to an absentee father so she can take a four-month cruise with her fiancé, is touted as a great mother by story's end, despite the fact that all the available evidence points to the contrary. The father compliments the mother for the good job she did on the daughter in spite of the fact that the daughter was absolutely vile until she spent a few months with the dad. Director-producer Joel Paul Reisig, a young Michigan-based entrepreneur, not only directs and produces films but also offers a course in fundraising and making films, underscoring the difficulty of making underfunded projects.