That this comes out of the Disney Studio is a distraction that would be better put, if at all possible, out of mind. If we feel specially inclined, on grounds of its origins, to give bonus points for its frank acknowledgment of such phenomena as Middle-American class-consciousness — unfit parents, drugs, and so forth — we would be obliged to dock it an equal number of points, on the same grounds, for unavoidably limiting the dramatic possibilities and cutting down the potential suspense. We know all too well, if we remember we are watching a Disney picture, that when the teenage hero levels a quivering gun at a dissatisfied drug customer, he is not actually going to shoot him, and that when he makes a pass at his date in the front seat of a pickup truck, he and she are somehow going to manage not to "go all the way." Tex, like Disney's earlier-released Tron, has simply shifted sights slightly, so that its ideal audience, if we were to put it in terms of Milton Bradley games, has moved up from "Ages 4-10" to, let's say, "Ages 12-17." Adapted from a novel by S.E. Hinton, the movie is sometimes addressed to this group to such a degree of solicitousness and spokesmanship that it will shut out everyone outside that age-range. But there is plenty here, too, in the well-defined situation of two motherless Oklahoma high-schoolers who must fend for themselves while their footloose father is earning an unsteady income from the rodeo circuit, that should be accessible and acceptable to all. With Matt Dillon, Jim Metzler, and Ben Johnson; directed by Tim Hunter. (1982) — Duncan Shepherd
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