Preteen girl looking at a cell phone with her parents

Personalized picks at your fingertips

Get the mobile app on iOS and Android

Get the app
Parents' Guide to

Tall Tale: The Unbelievable Adventure

By Charles Cassady Jr., Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 11+

Old West myth mash-up with some gun-toting lawlessness.

Movie PG 1995 97 minutes
Tall Tale: The Unbelievable Adventure Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

See all
age 14+

Based on 2 parent reviews

Hallieluann@yahoo.com
[email protected] Adult
June 3, 2015
age 9+

Old West Action and Adventure

Tall Tale was a good movie. It's set in the old west and the action and dialect reflect this. Definitely a good guy vs bad guy theme with shoot outs, near misses and ruthless land grabbers and their henchmen, also includes saloon scenes. The tall tale characters are portrayed as real people on which the legends were based. The "s" word is NOT in it as the previous review stated. Instead a character says "hot spit" and the captions confirm this. Other mild language includes damn, hell and ass. I watched it with my kids, ages 7, 9 and 11. The action was a little intense for my 7 yo at times but my 11yo loved it. Good messages about persevering and placing value on the right things in life.
pandalibrarian
pandalibrarian Adult
May 18, 2015
age 18+

Disappointed

I was so disappointed with this movie that I threw it away. The kids yawned through it. Paul Bunyan is not portrayed as big. He is normal size. There is the s word and H word. Violence was disturbing to many of my students. The movie portrays the bad man shooting the father at the beginning but doesn't show well enough that the father is not killed. Many kids thought he was shot in the eye and died. I don't know why Pecos Bill had to shoot off trigger fingers. I thought this could've been replaced by something more creative (like his tall tale stories). I just couldn't have been more disappointed and I would hope you take my advice and do not buy this, or show it to your kids. For a Disney movie, this didn't make the cut.
See all 2 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Somewhere in the American West in 1905, in a place called Paradise Valley, 12-year old Daniel (Nick Stahl) hates his hard life as chore-bound son of a hardworking farmer. Then he secretly follows dad to a meeting of fellow sodbusters being tempted to sell their homesteads to menacing railroad-construction tycoons from the industrialized east. When Daniel's dad resists being forced off his property, he's shot, and Daniel is left a fugitive with the deed to the family farm. Daniel's father constantly tried to keep up his boy's spirit with tall tales of frontier characters like Paul Bunyan (Oliver Platt) and Pecos Bill (Patrick Swayze), and Daniel, amazingly, finds those mythic icons in the flesh, interacting with him along with John Henry (Roger Aaron Brown) and Calamity Jane (Catherine O'Hara). Yet these heroes don't seem quite in tune with the 20th century, and Daniel has his own troubles living up to the legendary characters' outsized standards and astounding feats.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (2 ):
Kids say (2 ):

Nobody would confuse TALL TALE with the classic The Wizard of Oz -- which its storyline parallels at times -- but that these two can be mentioned together is some praise. Tall Tale actually feels like a throwback to the innocent, robust G-rated fun of earlier live-action Disney family-adventures such as Swiss Family Robinson or Treasure Island (1950), and it's got the splendid production values to match (filming locations in Monument Valley, Arizona). But there's also a post-Walt sly undertone, not unlike "adult" Westerns (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) about the "death of the west."

Daniel is disappointed by Pecos and Bunyan. Amidst newfangled telegraph lines and automobiles, these titans of the 1800s are kind of misfits, not the super-cowboy and ultra-lumberjack the boy envisioned. Daniel is also more vulnerable and flawed than a lot of celluloid kids. Viewers don't know how much of the story is "real" and how much happens in his head, as he calls on childhood idols for a psychological boost.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about characters from tall tales -- not only those represented here, but other historical (and fictitious) figures, mostly from frontier days, who have attained larger-than-life status, with movies to match. Discuss Davey Crockett, Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, and Nihanbazo, a wily hero of Great Lakes Indian tribes.

  • What's the distinction between "folklore" and equally ubiquitous characters from immortal fiction, like Tarzan, Superman, or the crew of the starship Enterprise.

  • Who are your heroes? Are any fictional characters? Current public figures?

Movie Details

Inclusion information powered by

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

See all recommended movie lists

Related Topics

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

See how we rate