The film's outcome hinges on a big race, with the circus» dancing horse
as a
contestant; this scene includes an unexpected
moment of high comedy, at once relieving and compounding the tension!
Sometimes Ritchie makes his simplistic points simplistically: past - it Barbie doll Feldon pushes her lonely, tendresse - starved husband away and we're left looking at the blue - green - lit TV dinners in her freezer (the word «frigid» is mercifully delayed till their next interview); Michael Kidd,
as a gruffly sentimental directorial superstar engaged by the local Jaycees to stage the spectacular, watches the Antelope Valley girl turn an onstage fumble into a sympathy - inducing bonus and murmurs, «They learn fast» (a mere reaction - shot cut to him at this point would have verged on the excessive; the line kills any validity the
moment might have had); a drummer (screenwriter Jerry Belson, no less) watches one
contestant segue into a striptease whose impiications are hilariously ambivalent in the context of so much plastic puffery, then exchanges glances with the orchestra leader and gives his drumstick a ribald stroke.