CITY SLICKERS
Reviewed by David N. Butterworth
(c) 1991 David N. Butterworth/The Summer Pennsylvanian
With DANCES WITH WOLVES making the great Hollywood western respectable again, it stands to reason that an attempt to rejuvenate the great Hollywood western parody wouldn't be too far behind.
The first of this breed is CITY SLICKERS, an amiable but surprisingly unfunny fish-out-of-water comedy starring Billy Crystal. In one of the flattest cowboy spoofs to mosey on down the trail in a long time, CITY SLICKERS simply leaves the viewer tired and saddle-sore.
One of the problems with the film is its laughs, or lack thereof. At almost two hours, there aren't enough of them to sustain a film of this length. Screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (SPLASH) have taken what is, after all, a pretty easy target and come up with a seemingly endless stream of banal and largely uninspired one-liners, the cow pat kind of humor that only appeals to little kids.
Comedic everyman Crystal plays Mitch, who sells radio air time for a living. Mitch has gotten to the point in his life where he's the best he's going to be, look or feel ... and it's not that great. He's on the verge of his 39th birthday and a mid-life crisis both at the same time.
Mitch's best friends are Ed (Bruno Kirby, who co-starred with Crystal in WHEN HARRY MET SALLY) and Phil (played by a bespectacled Daniel Stern). Ed, a sporting goods salesman with an eye for adventure, co-habits with a 24 year old underwear model who adores him, yet he's afraid to make any kind of long-term commitment. Phil is a hen-pecked grocery store manager whose tyrannical wife has made his life a living hell. These three amigos could sure use some serious counseling.
They settle instead for a couple of weeks of soul-searching out west, driving two hundred head of cattle from New Mexico to Colorado. It's a perfect opportunity to come to terms with their identities whilst fulfilling some of their adolescent fantasies - machismo, male bonding and merriment under the stars.
Mitch, Ed and Phil are joined on this trek by a motley crew of stereotypically offbeat characters, including the mandatory blonde-haired, tight-jeaned temptress who comes along for the ride, keeping our saddle- pals' hormones percolating along with the coffee.
Western veteran Jack Palance has a colorful role as the prickly trail boss who laughs at the ineptness of it all. "Two weeks out here is supposed to change your life?" he scoffs, astutely. Yet by the time these "city folk" finish horsing around, we are supposed to buy just that.
Dwarfing everything in the picture -- especially the laughs -- are the sprawling deserts of New Mexico, with their magnificent buttes and mesas. Too bad we don't get to see more of them, and less of Crystal, Stern and Kirby. These are two-dimensional characters in a three-dimensional landscape -- and a very spectacular one at that.
Another of the film's drawbacks is that it spends too much time dabbling in the seriousness of the male menopause. When the three aspiring cowpokes ruminate over sex, baseball and the other-worldly pleasures of their lost youth, this introspection comes across as sounding trite and awkward. If there is a balance between humor and sincerity, then the film never quite finds it.
The film momentarily comes to life in a scene in which Mitch, having first delivered a calf with his own hands (a sweetly sentimental if sticky moment), later risks his life to save it. It's a rare dramatic sequence in a film crying out for some genuine emotion.
Early in the film, Mitch's wife realizes that her husband needs a break from the rigors of everyday life. "Find your smile," she earnestly implores him. But by the movie's end, this viewer was still trying to find his.
| Directed by: Ron Underwood David N. Butterworth - UNIVERSITY OF PA | | Rating: ** Internet: butterworth@a1.mscf.upenn.edu |
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