While many movies have been made in Arkansas, The White River Kid was not the most memorable. The film’s lead is Arkansas’s Wes Bentley, before his star turn in American Beauty, depicting a serial killer with a butterfly tattoo on his face.
Despite a stellar cast featuring Antonio Banderas, Swoozie Kurtz, Bob Hoskins, Beau Bridges, Randy Travis and Ellen Barkin, as well as presidential brother Roger Clinton, the movie is muddled by a series of disjointed subplots that detract from the Kid’s pursuit of a path to redemption by way of his fiance’s hillbilly relatives.
The White River Kid was filmed at Hot Springs and other Arkansas locations in 1998 and relies heavily on negative stereotypes. While its producers called it “a zany adventure with a plethora of oddball characters on the road in the Bible Belt,” critics panned it as “a messy comedy infested with bad gags.” Never shown in theaters, it was released to video in Spain and Bulgaria in 1999.
Learn more about The White River Kid at the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
