Le meravigliose avventure di Chu Min

Dale Robertson presents this modest animated western with songs from United Screen Arts about post-Civil War "land grabbers" in 1860s California buying up all the property cheap before the government can use it to connect the East-to-West railroad, including land wrestled from innocent Settlers. The government, having sent out a senator to investigate the dirty doings, hires a bucolic trouble-shooter (voiced by Robertson) to come to the rescue after the senator disappears. Potentially interesting idea from writer-director David Detiege (who allegedly had a great deal of uncredited help) is loaded down with 'cute' asides to hold the attention of matinee audiences, such as a newborn colt saved from a mountain lion by a dog and a skunk, also a Chinese orphan girl named Stormy (voiced by Barbara Jean Wong) who talks and prays in pidgin English. The songs (worked on by an uncredited Henry Mancini) are pleasant, as are the familiar voices of Verna Felton, Edgar Buchanan and Ross Martin; the plot, however, is never given much of a chance to emerge. *1/2 from ****