The Ridin' Kid Review: Cheap, Dusty, and Surprisingly Fun

If you have got seventy minutes to spare and love dusty old Westerns where the cowboy hats are ridiculously oversized, The Ridin' Kid is worth a lazy afternoon watch. Anyone looking for a deep, modern plot will absolutely hate this, but fans of simple, old-school punch-ups will have a decent time. 🤠

The plot is about as basic as a piece of dry toast. Buddy Roosevelt plays an undercover marshal trying to stop a greedy cattle baron who basically wants to bully the entire town into submission.

Honestly, the cattle baron is so cartoonishly evil I kept waiting for him to tie someone to a train track. He has this one squinty glare that he uses in every single scene, even when he is just eating lunch.

Buddy Roosevelt is... charming, I guess? He has this goofy, wide smile that does not really match the "tough lawman" vibe, but you cannot help but like the guy.

There is this one fight scene near the saloon door where a guy gets punched, and you can clearly see him landing on what looks like a very soft mattress just out of frame. It is absolutely beautiful. 😂

The pacing gets a bit sluggish in the middle. It really feels like the director ran out of story and just decided to show people riding horses back and forth across the exact same hill three times.

If you want something with actual dramatic tension, you might be better off tracking down Paying the Price instead. This one is strictly for the easygoing crowd who do not mind some silliness.

The soundtrack in the copy I watched sounded like someone was banging on a toy piano in the next room. It does not really match the action, but it adds to the weird charm.

But man, the stunt work is actually pretty wild. These guys were throwing themselves off moving horses onto the hard dirt without any safety gear to save their bones.

Silly Little Details I Noticed

• The main villain's hat is so big it looks like it has its own zip code.
• A horse in the background of the final shootout looks genuinely bored and starts chewing on a fence. 🐎
• One henchman gets shot and does a dramatic spin that belongs in a ballet, not a western.

It is not a masterpiece, obviously. But it has that cheap, honest charm that you just do not get with modern movies anymore.