The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975)

Sorry, this movie sucks

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

What is going on in this town that people keep carrying giant mirrors through the middle of the street?! This is a complete throwaway comedy-western, whose mildly humorous individual parts don't add up to much more than a cheap distraction for bored little kids.

In some 50 years of movie watching this fits into my short list of classics. Warm-hearted, well acted, and with Knotts and Conway contributing some of the most hilarious scenes ever recorded. Without Knotts and Conway it would have been a pleasant but forgettable movie; they were a genius pairing. Unfortunately the sequel "Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again" released 4 years later wasn't as good and didn't do as well. I think I read that Apple Dumpling Gang was Disney's most profitable movie of the 1970's.

The Don Knotts/Tim Conway teamup makes this movie one of the all-time greats. How can anyone not laugh at this duo? They are fall-on-the-floor hysterical. The scene with the ladder is nothing short of brilliant! Once again, we have an example of a 1970s movie that features actual slapstick comedy instead of vulgarity or crudeness.Once again, viewers tend to forget the great character actors and their contributions that make this movie, if not great, at least above-average during the 1970s. I agree there are some horrible movies in the 1970s, but this probably is not one of the worst.Who can resist Harry Morgan's commanding voice? Or the actor (now long dead) who played the bank president? I feel that without these Walt Disney "fluff" movies, as a film buff, the whole 1970s decade would have been a dry desert. The reason is, what other movie studio could round up all the great actors of the period, put them together in a comedy, and make it work? Had these actors not been in these movies, we would not have seen them AT ALL! The children were irresistible, as well as the actors I have just mentioned.This anti-1970s-Disney attitude of viewers mystifies me. This particular movie was a lot better than some of Disney's other disasters, namely the sequel to this. Other Disney disasters: The Shaggy D.A. and Meteor.

One of the best live-action Disney movies. A sweet story about misplaced children, an unwilling but good-intentioned gambler as a foster parent and two bumbling crooks as the comic foil. Bill Bixby, of "My Favorite Martian" and "The Hulk" fame, plays Russell Donovan, the roaming gambler who is unwittingly stuck with some "valuables." Tim Conway and Don Knotts, a little past their prime, play the hapless crooks known as the "Hash Knife Outfit." Susan Clark plays the tomboy stage coach driver who fills in as the kids mother. It also stars Harry Morgan as the sheriff. Beautiful scenery, lots of action, comedy, and a fabulous saloon brawl that is the highlight of the film.