The hit Broadway musical Best Little Whorehouse in Texas lost a lot in translation when shifted to the screen. This boisterous celebration of The Chicken Ranch, a popular brothel threatened with a shutdown by Texas authorities, Whorehouse began life as a local Houston production, then was expanded upon for its New York showing. The movie does not so much expand as inflate, playing up the musical's highlights and comic setpieces for far more than they're worth. Moreover, the script was refashioned as a vehicle for Burt Reynolds, who plays the Sheriff, when it should have concentrated almost exclusively on Chicken Ranch madam Dolly Parton (her best song, "I Will Always Love You", later proved a hit for Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard). Charles Durning steals the show as a singing-dancing Texas governor (winning an Oscar nomination in the bargain), but there is much too little of him.