Two brothers, Tex and Mason McCormick, struggle to make it on their own when their mother dies and their father leaves them in their Oklahoma home.

Mason takes over running the household and, to make ends meet, sells Tex's beloved horse, Rowdy.

''[3] The film was edgy for Disney at the time for its scenes that depicted marijuana and teen age sex, however they not conflict with the script, once the project was launched.

''[3] Unlike other Disney films, it was shot entirely on location in Oklahoma, where the original setting of the novel,[3] both in the towns of Bixby and Tulsa.

[5] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 78 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

[6] Janet Maslin of The New York Times lauded Tex as "an utterly disarming, believable portrait of a small-town adolescent" that "captures Miss Hinton's novel perfectly" and that would "make a star out of Matt Dillon" and "forever alter the way moviegoers think about Walt Disney pictures."

"[8] David Sterritt of The Christian Science Monitor called it "probably the best picture turned out by the Disney studio since the heyday of the legendary Walt himself.

"[9] On the other hand, Variety wrote that "writers Charlie Haas and Tim Hunter (latter making his directing debut) seem intent on incorporating every conceivable adolescent and adult trauma into their script [from the novel by S.E.