CITY SLICKERS
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
CITY SLICKERS is a movie by Ron Underwood, written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, and starring Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, and Bruno Kirby, with Jack Palance, Patricia Wettig, and Helen Slater.
CITY SLICKERS is a very funny, very touching film that compares favorably with Billy Crystal's WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. Indeed, both films concentrate at their hearts on pretty much the same concern, a redefinition of manhood and manliness, within the context of sustained hilarity. CITY SLICKERS is an amiable, well-intentioned, feel-good, irresistible, and heartfelt comedy.
Indeed, the cattle drive hadn't even begun and the muscles in my face were already sore from non-stop grinning. Which may be a reflection how little smiling I do these days.
Billy Crystal has been a favorite of mine since the Seventies when he played the token gay man on TV's SOAP. Over the years, he's gotten funnier and no less attractive for being older. He mugs the camera, he throws away priceless one-liners like a maharajah scattering coins, he keeps us gasping as we struggle with his wise-guy, city-boy energy and wit; he's pretty much limited to playing Billy Crystal but for me that's enough. In CITY SLICKERS he's as good as he's ever gotten; his angst over aging, over being stuck in a meaningless job, is real without being pushed to new histrionic heights. Crystal emotes by cracking wise and here he cracks very wise indeed.
His two buddies are a supermarket manager (Daniel Stern) bullied by his wife and father-in-law/boss and a gravel-voiced macho-man (Bruno Kirby) who drives his friends to take vacations from common sense--running the bulls at Pamplona and driving cattle from Colorado to New Mexico. Both actors are effective and appealing. Stern is an owl-eyed, life-shocked victim, a man who everyone agrees has no life. Kirby, a veteran supporting actor, may find his role a break-away part for his career; he is self-protecting, vulnerable, a tough guy whose afraid, and immensely appealing.
(The three of them are first seen in an opening sequence that is part of the credits and may well be one of the funniest credits sequences I've ever seen. Funny and altogether appropriate to the story to come.)
Even more appealing is the camaraderie between the three men. They compete, they criticize, they occasionally dislike each other, but always they love each other. And it is the real strength of CITY SLICKERS.
Of the supporting parts, only that of Palance is really memorable. The women are largely irrelevant in this "men's movie"; Wettig and Slater are perfectly fine, but their parts are small. However, it is wonderful to see Jack Palance again, even though he looks and sounds very sick. He sounds like he has emphysema, gasping for every breath, and his skin looks waxy and translucent. Palance has been making Westerns since SHANE, and his mere silhouette encapsulates the entire mythos of the West for this viewer. There is a very special scene between Palance and Crystal that is going to be on several posters' lists of special movie moments.
The story idea is said to have been Crystal's. It was worked up by a veteran writing team, Mandel and Ganz (SPLASH, PARENTHOOD, NIGHT SHIFT), and the script is definitely a strength here. They create comic situations that are more than funny, they also inform us about the characters. Underwood's (TREMORS) direction also helps the film capture the agony of characters who find that their lives don't offer anything other than loss and dissolution. There is also some wonderful Western locale photography.
CITY SLICKERS isn't going to challenge you; it isn't an intellectual heavyweight. Instead, it's life-affirming, meaningful, funny, skillful, heart-warming, and ingratiating. I got my money's worth and more and I recommend CITY SLICKERS, even at full price.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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