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Old Yeller

Old Yeller

Adventure · Drama · Family · 1957

Young Travis Coates is left to take care of the family ranch with his mother and younger brother while his father goes off on a cattle drive in the 1860s. When a yellow mongrel comes for an uninvited stay with the family, Travis reluctantly adopts the dog.

Movie details

Old Yeller

“All the heart, all the excitement of a great frontier adventure!”

1957 Adventure · Drama · Family 1h 24m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

7.2 / 10

16.3K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

100 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

84 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

6.9 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

Young Travis Coates is left to take care of the family ranch with his mother and younger brother while his father goes off on a cattle drive in the 1860s. When a yellow mongrel comes for an uninvited stay with the family, Travis reluctantly adopts the dog.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over Old Yeller?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

Where the Red Fern Grows

Where the Red Fern Grows

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Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for two years to achieve his dream of buying two red-bone coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in life as he faces overwhelming challenges in adventure and tragedy roaming the river bottoms of Cherokee country with his dogs, Old Dan and Little Ann.

A Dog's Way Home

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Flicka

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Katy McLaughlin desires to work on her family's mountainside horse ranch, although her father insists she finish boarding school. Katy finds a mustang in the hills near her ranch. The headstrong 16 year old then sets her mind to tame a mustang and prove to her father she can run the ranch. But when tragedy happens, it will take all the love and strength the family can muster to restore hope.

The Call of the Wild

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Max

Max

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A dog that helped soldiers in Afghanistan returns to the U.S. and is adopted by his handler's family after suffering a traumatic experience.

Fluke

Fluke

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Workaholic Thomas Johnson dies in an auto accident and reincarnates as a dog. Remembering some of his previous being, he returns to his wife and son to protect them from the man who caused his accident. But, as time goes by, his memories return, and Thomas realizes he wasn't such a good husband and father.

The Fox and the Hound

The Fox and the Hound

Adventure · 1981

When a feisty little fox named Tod is adopted into a farm family, he quickly becomes friends with a fun and adorable hound puppy named Copper. Life is full of hilarious adventures until Copper is expected to take on his role as a hunting dog -- and the object of his search is his best friend!

Where the Red Fern Grows

Where the Red Fern Grows

Drama · 2003

Set in the Ozark Mountains during the Great Depression, Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for 2 years to achieve his dream of buying two coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in God as he faces overwhelming challenges in adventure and tragedy roaming the river bottoms of Cherokee country with "Old Dan" and "Little Ann."

The Yearling

The Yearling

Drama · 1946

Jody convinces his parents to allow him to adopt a young deer, but what will happen if the deer misbehaves?

News of the World

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Drama · 2020

A Texan traveling across the wild West bringing the news of the world to local townspeople, agrees to help rescue a young girl who was kidnapped.

Where it lives

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Streaming availability data supplied by JustWatch.

Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Robert Stevenson

Written by

Fred Gipson · William Tunberg

Tommy Kirk

Tommy Kirk

Travis Coates

Dorothy McGuire

Dorothy McGuire

Katie Coates

Fess Parker

Fess Parker

Jim Coates

Kevin Corcoran

Kevin Corcoran

Arliss Coates

Jeff York

Jeff York

Bud Searcy

Beverly Washburn

Beverly Washburn

Lisbeth Searcy

Chuck Connors

Chuck Connors

Sanderson

Court is in session

Put Old Yeller on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Sentimental Softie

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Cool Ironist

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.