It's hard for me to do an accurate appraisal of this film, as the version I downloaded from archive.org was missing 24 minutes--that's about a third of the movie! Why? Because back in the 1950s, some overzealous knuckle-heads decided to cram the Roy Rogers films into a TV time slot--trimming them all down to about 53 minutes. In a few cases, where the original film was about an hour long, the difference between the two versions is minimal but here the film is simply hacked apart. So keep this in mind when you read this. However, I can assume that the film was not all that great based on what I saw.
The film begins with Dale Evans being told that her show in Chicago is being shut down, as the financial backers have pulled out of the show. However, she owns a ranch out west and takes her friends with her to inspect and possibly sell it. Now here something VERY uncharacteristic occurs--Roy Rogers decides to lie! Instead of taking them to the beautiful ranch, he pretends that Gabby's rundown place is hers. She naturally is disappointed. However, the joke ends up on both of them when she sells the ranch--not realizing it's much bigger and more valuable. The buyer sure knows and enjoys cheating her. But Roy isn't going to let this be the end of it and he goes about trying to right a wrong.
How is the film overall? Well, it suffers not only from having Roy play a bit of a jerk but once again the usual female cliché is present--the leading lady HATES Roy with no provocation and seems grouchy. Now later in the film, Dale's character had lots of reason to hate him but why did the writers almost always do this with Dale and Roy? The only saving grace is Gabby Hayes--who is even grouchier and funnier than usual. This misogynist says such wonderful lines about women as "....next to sheep, they're the dumbest critters on Earth!". Overall, I'd give this film a 3--perhaps more in the extended version. But it does suffer because Roy, who always played a sweet person, is a bit of a jerk in this one--and spends much of the film trying to undo all the harm he caused.
By the way, although the film is called "Utah", it sure doesn't look like it! Like other Rogers films, it was made in California.
