Gus is a 1976 American sports comedy film released by Walt Disney Productions, distributed by Buena Vista Distribution, directed by Vincent McEveety and starring Ed Asner, Don Knotts and Gary Grimes. Its center character is Gus, a football-playing mule.[1][2] The film did well at the box office and was released on home video in 1981.
Gus 1976 Full Movie
Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four and wrote, "Two different kinds of movies have been coming out of the Walt Disney organization in the last few years: Inventive, entertaining fantasies like Escape to Witch Mountain and The Island at the Top of the World, and dreary retreads of tired old Disney formulas. 'Gus,' alas, is in the retread category."[2] Richard Eder of The New York Times called it "a decently average Disney film, with a few funny parts and other parts where you would agree to smile if you could. Where the movie tries the hardest, it fails the most, as in a terribly long and trite comedy sequence in a supermarket."[3] Joseph McBride of Variety called it "a pleasant family comedy" that "has the amiable spirit of a tall tale or kiddie story book, and while the plot mechanics are largely predictable, the cast keeps the ball in the air over the 96-minute running time."[4] Linda Gross of the Los Angeles Times described it as "a funny and loveable, though familiar Disney live-action fantasy film for football families."[5] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post found the film's pace "sluggish" and added, "After a while it becomes impossible to share the kids' glee in the sort of pratfall you can see coming 10 seconds in advance." He conceded, however, that "there's no point in denying or fighting the kick children get out of even mediocre slapstick."[6]
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The NFL agreed to this movie license? Don Knotts coaches the California Atoms; a team so bad they get a mule named Gus for a star kicker and start winning. How bad must the rest of the NFL teams be if a mule gets your lousy team into the Super Bowl?
Another fine example of the, honestly, God-awful state the Disney studio was in following the passing of Walt.Easily one of the worst movies I've ever trudged through. Even Knotts and Asner can't save this from being a complete dud.
At this point I wondered, how can this movie get any better? Could it also have two 70s comedy stars as gangsters? The mouse heard my prayers and rewarded me with Crankcase (Tim Conway) and Spinner (Tom Bosley), whose scheming cause the Atoms to lose two games.
Director Vincent McEveety was all over the 70s Disney map, making everything from The Castaway Cowboy to The Strongest Man in the World, Superdad and two Herbie movies. His last directing job was a TV movie that united Markie Post and Robert Urich called Stranger at My Door, which is completely the kind of movie that I spend weeks tracking down.
VIDEO and AUDIO Gus is presented in 1.33:1 fullscreen. As mentioned elsewhere on this website, this presentation gets a thumbs-down as it would most definitely have been a widescreen film upon first release. The print is not pristine, but it is a vast improvement over the original washed-out videotape first issued back in 1981. The disc seems to have been mastered from the 1998 tape reissue when the tape was first touted as part of the "Don Knotts Collection". The DVD case keeps this legend, one of only a handful that kept this distinction as most Disney DVD's have sported new artwork and graphics than their tape counterparts.The audio is listed as being in Dolby Digital Surround Sound, but I can't tell as I don't have a Surround Sound system. However, the sound is very crisp and clear on large stereo speakers considering this film's 30-year old analog recording. Disney has been known to store their sound elements quite well in many cases, and this film is no exception. BONUS FEATURESThis is really a bare bones DVD; there is not a bonus feature to be found. CLOSING THOUGHTSGus is a funny and pleasant little Disney comedy that is one of their more entertaining features. It's too bad it was released in such a rushed manner so as to not be issued in widescreen and sans extras. In fact, if you would like to hear Tim Conway talk about this film, you would be wise to seek out the Apple Dumpling Gang commentary on that disc. Otherwise, this merits a purchase only for completists and those who are devoted fans of this film or the many celebrity stock characters who appear in it.More on the DVD / Buy from Amazon.com
One of video's greatest contributions is the way it puts film history at every viewer's fingertips. New releases reminding us of this include the Criterion Collection's boxed set of movies by the late Cassavetes, a founder of modern indie cinema, and the National Film Preservation Foundation's new package of items from film archives.
The biggest news about More Treasures From American Film Archives, 1894-1931 is that its 50 movies (including the one with Mr. Visser and his fowl) have never been on video before. The set is a sequel to the original "Treasures" collection, released on four DVDs in 2000. The new three-disc box (plus booklet) is a little lighter on legendary classics, but it's nothing short of astonishing in the variety of its fare.
Not that more is really needed. Providing the first video of "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" at its full 135-minute length is a major public service by itself. But it's downright inspired to pair this with the tighter 108-minute version, which Cassavetes also regarded as a "director's cut."
Along with that 1976 production are four other films that Cassavetes financed with his actor's paycheck (he starred in such movies as "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Dirty Dozen") and directed with total creative control. These are the definitive video editions of the seminal "Faces," the sublime "A Woman Under the Influence," the harrowing "Opening Night," and the semi-improvised "Shadows," which started his filmmaking career in 1959.
The special value of Criterion's set is the encouragement it provides for moviegoers to reassess Cassavetes's unique artistry, which (except for "A Woman Under the Influence," his sole directorial hit) met with financial disaster at almost every turn.
I don't buy Criterion's promotional claim that Cassavetes now stands revealed as "an audience's director," because the challenges he deliberately poses for his viewers - mercurial shifts of feeling, out-of-the-blue plot twists, characters who are hard to understand because they don't understand themselves - are the opposite of the neatly tied, emotionally safe packages Hollywood has trained us to expect. His movies require the same degrees of attention, empathy, and compassion that Cassavetes himself put into them. 2ff7e9595c
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