For the Rodeo: Five Best Movie Parades

By Pete Vonder Haar Thu., Feb. 26 2009 at 11:31 AM

It's Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo time! Tomorrow's Go Texan Day and Saturday's the parade. Certainly some of you out there are looking forward to watching musical acts from 200 feet away and the lingering smells of hay, manure, and sweaty, sweaty cowboys. So sit back, kick your boots off, and get in that rodeo spirit with some of cinema's best parades.

5. Hello, Dolly! (1969) It probably isn't fair to blame Barbra Streisand for the death of the big-budget movie musical, and the total lack of any for almost ten years following Hello, Dolly! is probably a coincidence. But still, any time you can blame Babs for something, you really should.

4. The Fugitive (1993) It's a purely academic question, but one can't help wonder if Dr. Kimble would have escaped so easily into a St. Patrick's Day parade had he been gay.

3. The Music Man (1962) It's to Robert Preston's credit that more people have probably seen the monorail episode of The Simpsons than the movie upon which it was based. Such is Preston's monument, and perhaps it would not have displeased him.

2. Ferris Buellers's Day Off (1986)

He didn't get arrested for jumping on a float
His man Cameron's got a...jersey like a billy goat

If you were lucky enough to see this at a certain age -- like, say mid-high school like me -- this scene was enough to convince you you'd be a timid failure at everything you ever attempted.

1. Animal House (1978) The top spot has to go to the Faber College homecoming parade, with its swashbuckling John Belushi, 10,000 marbles please, the mayor goosing the dean's wife, and Kevin Bacon in full-on freakout mode.