"Tall Tale" is loaded with good ideas but doesn't seem to have a clue about what to do with them. Unfortunately, that pretty much sums up this latest "family film" from the folks at Disney. (The subtitle, "The Unbelievable Adventures of Pecos Bill," is part of the advertising but does not appear on the film itself).

Though he gets fourth billing, young Nick Stahl (most recently seen as Susan Sarandon's youngest son in "Safe Passage") has the lead role in "Tall Tale," as Daniel Hackett, the 11-year-old son of a farmer in the generic Old West of 1905 — a place somewhere in the Rockies called Paradise Valley.

Daniel is a dreamer, entranced with the coming industrial age — motor cars and the electric light and talk of the telephone keep his mind abuzz. But his father Jonas (Stephen Lang) is a more pragmatic, down-to-earth fellow, who just wants to till the soil of his farm and be left alone. His one concession to wistfulness is spinning tall tales about Pecos Bill, John Henry and Paul Bunyan for his son when they go fishing out on a lake.

So, when evil J. P. Stiles (Scott Glenn) shows up and convinces everyone else in Paradise Valley to sell, Jonas has a difficult time going up against the rest of the town as the lone holdout. Stiles, a small-town hitman for big-city railroad tycoons, doesn't seem to care — he's confident he can get what he wants by stealing the deed and forging Jonas' signature, if necessary.

But Jonas passes his deed to Daniel and tells him to hide out. The next day, after his father has been shot, Daniel steals away to their rowboat and falls asleep.

As the boat floats away, Daniel dreams — "Wizard of Oz" style — that Pecos Bill (Patrick Swayze), John Henry (Roger Aaron Brown) and Paul Bunyan (Oliver Pratt), in the company of his shiny blue ox, help him take on Stiles.

Swayze, Brown and Pratt are great fun, and young Stahl is quite good, but while screenwriters Steven L. Bloom and Robert Rodat set up some enjoyable scenarios, they don't punch them up with enough humor. And director Jeremiah Chechik ("National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," "Benny & Joon") is really at a loss with the action scenes — the worse example being a lengthy fight in a log mill where he employs far too many chaotic closeups, so that it is often hard to tell what's going on.

There is also a thick layer of sentiment that really bubbles up toward the end, with a heavy-handed message about self-confidence and self-worth, which begins to sound like it should be spoken by "Saturday Night Live's" Stuart Smalley.

"Tall Tale," rated PG for considerable violence and a few vulgar remarks, may draw an audience initially, thanks to the action-packed television ads, but those who see it probably won't recommend it with much enthusiasm.