This is a pleasant if innocuous TV comedy about a Russian ballerina who defects and a rodeo performer who hides her from Russian officials. Leslie Wing is sweet and charming as Natalia, and Lee Majors is rodeo champion Bob Clayton who finds himself face-to-face with her in their hotel elevator. Obviously, she's using the crowded elevator and the position that she's in as an opportunity to look to him for help, and when they both find themselves at LAX, she manages to escape and ends up in the back of his van, having somehow change clothes with an American woman who seem willing to be detained. They end up in the country where a romance blossoms, then in New York, while the Russian officials do all they can to locate her.
A very dour Anjelica Huston, as one of the Russian officials, is playing an obvious spoof of Ninotchka or Natasha Fatale, clad in a very masculine black and white suit with an unflattering hairstyle. As this was right before she went on to success by winning the Oscar for "Prizzi's Honor", her presence in this is a real curiosity. Majors and Wing really don't have much chemistry, but she is cute and fun to watch and their banter is clever. I didn't really find much of the story line all that realistic, but for cheaply done made-for-TV movie, it's okay for what it is. Not too much interested in the rodeo sequences, and Majors' treatment of a temperamental, skittish horse is rather disturbing.
A very dour Anjelica Huston, as one of the Russian officials, is playing an obvious spoof of Ninotchka or Natasha Fatale, clad in a very masculine black and white suit with an unflattering hairstyle. As this was right before she went on to success by winning the Oscar for "Prizzi's Honor", her presence in this is a real curiosity. Majors and Wing really don't have much chemistry, but she is cute and fun to watch and their banter is clever. I didn't really find much of the story line all that realistic, but for cheaply done made-for-TV movie, it's okay for what it is. Not too much interested in the rodeo sequences, and Majors' treatment of a temperamental, skittish horse is rather disturbing.
