The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is just about everything it's meant to be - a couple of diverting hours in the dark. Rollicking, good-natured, a bit spicy and with just enough heart to avoid seeming totally synthetic.

Dimples, wigs, bazooms, and all, Dolly Parton is phenomenally likable as the madam; her whole personality is melodious, and her acting isn't bad at all, even though the director, Colin Higgins, has made her chest the focal point of her scenes.

If they ever give Dolly her freedom and stop packaging her so antiseptically, she could be terrific. But Dolly and Burt and Whorehouse never get beyond the concept stage in this movie.

The dialogue is Texas crude, the sentiment Bible Belt coy, and the songs conveyor-belt Broadway: stale air on a G-string.

You're obliged to take your fun where you can find it during this coyly coarse-minded, near-wreck of a musical, and there's precious little to be found watching the costars gather moss in each other's uneasy company. [23 July 1982, p.D3]

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas isn't a movie about human nature at odds with itself, but a witless and unwitting mirror for Hollywood's worst instincts and onanistic conceits. [23 July 1982, p.11]

All the tunes are forgettable, and Reynolds and Dom DeLuise, who plays a crusading moralist, ham it up mercilessly.