CITY SLICKERS 2: THE LEGEND OF CURLY'S GOLD
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Jon Lovitz, Jack Palance. Screenplay: Billy Crystal and Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel. Director: Paul Weiland.
It's a hard life being a sequel. It must be something like being the younger sibling of someone incredibly successful: the self-imposed pressure to deal with the mystique of the predecessor; inevitable and unforgiving comparisons; some level or another of disappointment. We, as viewers and critics alike, have tremendous difficulty separating the Roman numeral from the name that precedes it, even when the sequel might be a perfectly decent film in its own right. CITY SLICKERS was a lively, funny film with a dose of warm fuzziness; CITY SLICKERS 2: THE LEGEND OF CURLY'S GOLD is less lively, less funny and a bit more heavy-handed in its emotion. For all that, it's still got more laughs than any other comedy out right now, and a dose of high-spirited action besides.
One year after the events in CITY SLICKERS, Mitch Robbins (Billy Crystal) is riding high. He's now station manager at his radio station, has provided a job for best friend Phil (Daniel Stern), and is looking forward to a happy 40th birthday. However, a few surprises are in store. One is the arrival of Mitch's ne'er-do-well brother Glen (Jon Lovitz); another is the discovery of what appears to be a treasure map in the lining of the Stetson left by deceased trail boss Curly (Jack Palance). Then there is Mitch's belief that he is being followed by Curly's ghost. When the map proves to be legitimate, Mitch, Phil and Glen hit the trail to find $20 million in gold bars. Along the way they are joined by Curly's twin brother Duke (also Palance), and face a variety of obstacles on their quest for the gold.
CITY SLICKERS 2 faces a couple of problems from the get-go. One is that avarice isn't nearly as endearing a motivation as self-discovery. The Mitch Robbins of the original was in search of his smile; this time around he is in search of money. There is a lack of depth to much of the humor as a result, and even the fraternal conflict between Mitch and Glen can't pick up the slack. The other problem is that director Paul Weiland (whose only previous feature was the legendary Bill Cosby debacle LEONARD PART 6) doesn't seem capable of keeping his actors in the service of the story. He indulges Billy Crystal's worst tendencies toward hamming it up with Borscht belt shtick, and Daniel Stern goes bug-eyed at the slightest provocation. There was an irony and a light touch to Ron Underwood's direction of the original, a touch Weiland doesn't seem to have.
However, CITY SLICKERS 2 is consciously a very different kind of film than its predecessor. It's a big, broad, silly adventure and on that level it succeeds. The New York prologue is overlong (and includes a pointedly anachronistic shot of the "Late Show" marquis on the Ed Sullivan Theater when the film is set in 1992), but once the slickers hit the trail the fun begins in earnest. Jack Palance is again a delightful presence, amd makes Duke a bit nastier yet also more accessible than the crusty Curly. No one plays a sadsack quite like Lovitz, who outshines his co-stars with his oddball inferiority complex and impromptu renderings of soliloquies from the GODFATHER films. The action sequences, while a bit too familiar, are still well-staged, and the script by Crystal and CITY SLICKERS veterans Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel is full of funny lines. They may not always add up to a huge payoff, but they keep coming and there aren't many duds.
CITY SLICKERS 2 centers its character growth on the value of friends and family, but most of the time the emotion seems forced. Ganz and Mandel seem to require a saccharine center to their comedic confections, and the result is an even greater likelihood of an unfavorable comparison to CITY SLICKERS. Had Crystal insisted on a pure romp, he might have scored big. As it stands, CITY SLICKERS 2: THE LEGEND OF CURLY'S GOLD is a sunny, funny comedy at least as worthwhile as comedy/Western competitor MAVERICK ... and right now, that might be the more valuable comparison.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 bars of gold: 6.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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