City Slickers (1991)

Starring: Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Bruno Kirby, Jack Palance, Jeffrey Tambor, Helen Slater, David Paymer, Josh Mostel, Mr. Moseby from The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Lisa Simpson from The Simpsons, and Jake Gyllenhaal
Grade: A

An alternate title for City Slickers could’ve been How Mitch Got His Groove Back.

Summary

In Pamplona, Spain, middle-aged friends Mitch Robbins (Crystal), Ed (Kirby) and Phil (Stern) participate in the running of the bulls. Ed and Phil are able to escape the bulls, but Mitch gets poked right in the ass by the horns of one. Later in the hospital, Mitch’s ass gets repaired as Phil takes pictures. As this goes on, Mitch questions why they listen to Ed’s stupid ideas. The running of the bulls being his most recent one. On the plane back, Mitch agrees with his wife Barbara (Patricia Wettig) about how their adventures seem to be desperate attempts to cling to their youth but Ed, dating young fashion model Kim (Walker Brandt), doesn’t see it that way. Phil is down for Ed’s newest idea of parachuting, but Mitch knows it’s just because Phil’s marriage to Arlene (Karla Tamburrelli) is miserable.

One year later, in New York City, Mitch is woken up at 5:16AM on the dot by a phone call from his mother wishing him a happy 39th birthday because at this exact time so many years ago, he was born. He’s not fazed however as he gets this call every year from his mother, reciting it as she says it, with Barbara laughing. Following the call, he talks aloud about aging, so Barbara threatens to cancel his birthday party because she knows Mitch gets depressed every year on his birthday. However, he insists he’ll be good because he wants to see his friends. Soon after, Mitch goes to work. He’s in radio advertising and buys and sells time for the advertisements to be on his station. At work, his boss and station manager Lou (Tambor) criticizes the most recent advertisement he bought to play at the station and notices how Mitch is in a major rut. He understands it’s his birthday and he’s going through a bit of a midlife crisis, but he tells him from now on, he has to personally approve all the new spots until Mitch gets back on track. Later, he goes to his son Danny’s (Gyllenhaal) school for Career Day to talk about his job. Beforehand, a foul-mouthed construction worker (Robert Costanzo) goes first, and the kids love him. Danny is told to introduce Mitch, but he’s ashamed of Mitch’s job and initially tells the class he’s a submarine commander until admitting he actually works for the radio. Mitch starts talking about his job at first, but it spirals into a rant about how shitty life is to a confused class of nine-year-old children.

Following this, he talks to Barbara about how his job sucks, he feels trapped, and how he’s definitely against sending their daughter to a performing arts school, a daughter who decides to spend the night at her friend’s place despite Mitch’s birthday party being that night. At the house party, Mitch has all his friends there and everything seems to be going well. Ed is even married to Kim now. Mitch, who sees Phil fake sleeping again to avoid talking to his horrible wife Arlene, goes over to the couch to see how he’s doing. Soon after they start talking, Arlene tells Phil she wants to go because he has to open the supermarket her father owns (and Phil runs) at 4:30AM, forcing Phil to plead with her to stay fifteen more minutes. Ed joins them and presents Mitch with their gift: all three of them in New Mexico for two weeks driving cattle in a cattle drive. It’s Mitch’s dream! They can be real life cowboys! Mitch likes the idea but turns them down because he already has a trip planned to Florida with Barbara to see her parents. The party is interrupted by Nancy (Yeardley Smith), a twenty-year-old cashier who works with Phil. She shows up in a panic to tell him in front of everyone she’s missed her period. Nancy confirms Phil was cheating on Arlene with her, and Arlene and Phil get into a huge screaming match, effectively ending the party. Later that night, as Mitch and Barbara clean up, Barbara wonders if Mitch will end up like Phil, chasing after some random girl because he isn’t happy. Mitch calms her down and says this would never happen because it has nothing to do with her. He just feels down.

Knowing how unhappy he would be with her and the family in Florida, she insists, as her present to him, he go on the cattle drive trip with Ed and Phil.

Over in New Mexico at the ranch, Mitch, Ed, and Phil get acclimated and they meet all the other guests. There’s a father and son duo who own a dental practice in Baltimore in Ben (Bill Henderson) and Steve Jessup (Phill Lewis), ice cream makers Ira (Paymer) and Barry Shalowitz (Mostel), and Bonnie Rayburn (Slater). Bonnie was supposed to come with a friend, but she’s by herself because the friend bailed. The owner of the ranch Clay Stone (Noble Willingham) lays out the basics of what they will be doing. This is a real working ranch, and the idea is to train this group of guests on how to drive cattle and get all these cows to their ranch in Colorado. There’s a chef named Cookie (Tracey Walter) and two professional cowboys that will help them in T.R. (Dean Hallo) and Jeff (Kyle Secor). The trail boss will be there in a couple of days.

With all of this in mind, Stone makes it clear: “You came out here city slickers, you’re gonna go home cowboys”.

Training begins right away and though it’s fun, it’s definitely not easy. After a fun montage of this, Ed criticizes Mitch’s lassoing skills (which are nonexistent at the moment), but they stop to notice Bonnie being harassed by T.R. and Jeff. Mitch goes over to try and calm the situation down with his joking, but the cowboys refuse to budge, so Ed and Phil come over ready to fight. Before things get worse, trail boss Curly (Palance) shows up and lassos T.R.’s neck and brings him down. After T.R. refuses to apologize, Curly throws a knife right in front of his groin and T.R. apologizes in fear. The two asshole cowboys leave, as does Curly, so Bonnie thanks Mitch for coming over to help in the first place. Mitch panics, immediately says he’s married, and leaves. Later that night, all the guests have this small party outside and Ed gives Mitch a hard time for his “married” comment to Bonnie. Phil, Ben, and Steve join them, and they all talk about Curly and how crazy badass he is. Despite him helping them earlier, Mitch thinks Curly is a lunatic. After he goes on a small rant, Curly shows up behind him, hearing a majority of it. Curly scares everyone away. The night ends with Mitch trying to apologize, and Curly stating he takes craps bigger than him. The next morning, Phil gets the good news that Nancy isn’t pregnant, but his life still sucks, so it’s whatever.

At the behest of Ben, everyone lets out a good “Yee-haw!” reminiscent of John Wayne’s Red River. Now, the trek to Colorado begins! This will be no ordinary cattle drive though. Due to incompetence, Curly’s issues with the sarcastic Mitch, as well as unforeseen circumstances to the highest degree, let’s just say things don’t go according to the brochure.

My Thoughts:

I go back to this a lot, but City Slickers is another movie that has no business being as good as it is.

What does it do so special that makes us look back at it this fondly? Does it do anything we haven’t seen? It’s a movie about three friends going through separate midlife crises and deciding to take a trip to solve the issue, learning a lot about each other in the process. You have the main guy who makes the funny comments (Crystal), the awkward friend that has the moment where he flips out (Stern), and the one who claims monogamy is unnatural (Kirby). How many times have we seen this formula being used in male-centric comedies? It’s almost all of them. With City Slickers though, it still works. Though you’re not watching a revolutionary film, a good portion of the film really resonates, mostly because it’s honest, genuine, and very fun. You don’t have to be thirty-nine to appreciate City Slickers. The themes presented and its humor can be for everyone. It’s a movie about friendship, figuring out what we want in life, and avoiding complacency. The reason as to why this movie can be enjoyed today just as it was in 1991 is because of how relevant these themes are and how well they’re presented in the story. Plus, it’s still very funny. I’m a big Billy Crystal fan, so you know I was loving every minute of this. His one-liners as he messes with his friends, or the not-having-it Curly was so much fun.

He’s the friend in the friend group everyone wants to be, even though most are probably like Daniel Stern’s Phil than they’d like to admit.

A big part of this film is looking at how different each man’s lives are and how even in situations where they should be happier, they’ve all come to that stopping point in their lives where they realize they’re not. They need to get away and hit the “pause” button. Mitch has a good job, a loving and involved wife, and two kids. The problem is that he’s not happy, and his family and married life are suffering because of it. Sometimes, no matter what you do, you’re just discontented. You can’t explain it. The reason as to why Mitch gets depressed around his birthday every year is because age just reminds him time is running out and when you’re already in a rut, the feeling of being dejected is only maximized. Ed has the hottest woman out of all of them, but he pushes for these vacations more than either of his friends. Is it to fill a void, avoid personal problems, or because he’s one of those guys who feels better about life when he’s with his friends? Is it a combination of all of them? Ed is a complicated man, despite his on-the-surface confidence and happiness. You can tell he’s hiding something within him that is waiting to be talked about. He’s the last guy to open up in this movie but when he does at times, you really feel the connection to him that the other two friends have. Phil was stuck in a miserable marriage to open the movie and only made things worse with his infidelity, so we know why he needs this trip too.

What this movie does well is balance these very broad issues (along with other topics) and deals with it without making the movie a dramedy. It’s very well adjusted, and it only heightens the comedy coming from it. The humor and the conflict flow naturally, believably and above all else, it’s written with a heart.

We like seeing these guys hangout, talk, bond, and succeed. For some reason, seeing Mitch get a bit of swagger back by bringing in his first few strays brought me a lot of joy, along with the accompanied moonwalk and Michael Jackson impression. The bonding gets even better however, when they have a conversation regarding their best/worst days. Even with the topics touched in this small, very well-written, authentic scene, we learn so much about these characters and our attachment to them grows. Their different perspectives on life are highlighted so well with this smart and to-the-point screenplay, with Mitch mentioning his worst day being when Barbara found a lump, and they were worried it could’ve been cancerous. Thankfully, it ended up being nothing. Ed sees this as a great day though because it ended up being nothing, looking on the positive side compared to Mitch’s naturally pessimistic point of view. It forces you to look at things from a very different perspective. It makes you sit up and go, “Wow, he’s got a point”. In that moment, you realize how you can take from these characters and apply moments like this to your own life.

This is when you know you have a good movie on your hands.

It makes you think and appreciate life more than ever before. You start to think how maybe we need to stop being the “glass half-empty” type of guy and start being the “glass half-full” type of guy. Though the realities of life make it hard to be this person (Phil’s reaction to Mitch happily calling his life a “do-over” show this), seeing these characters face it firsthand is a good reminder that these are the steps we can take to feel whole again. Am I giving this movie too much credit? It’s hard to say, but I think it resonates for a reason. Again, for a simple comedy, it’s carefully crafted and talks about things enough to develop its story and characters but not too much to where it brings you down. Ed’s best/worst day hit me like a brick too. It was a fantastic way to explain why he is the person he is. Their friendship is real. Though they inevitably go through their problems with each other, their friendship is solidified by a wonderful third act that is not only really well done and brings this movie together as a whole, but it also brings the audience in at a level I didn’t expect. To do this without guns, in a western, is pretty impressive. There was something so heartwarming about the three friends smiling and laughing together after narrowly escaping death. This is a rock-solid movie friendship.

I’m not sure if Jack Palance was Best Supporting Actor-worthy because his role of Curly seemed to be an impression of any tough guy cowboy character we remember from yesteryear, but he did embody the mysteriousness and ruthless of the role for the amount of time he was onscreen. It may have been a “Thank you” Oscar, but I’ll allow it. His scenes with Crystal were great, especially when Curly gets mad at him for playing the harmonica and Mitch finally having enough and yelling at him (“Shut the hell up! I’m on vacation!”), gaining his respect in the process. The cow birthing scene will also live in infamy (“You know, this was not in the brochure”).

There has to be a “We Love Norman” fan club out there somewhere.

With countless funny lines (“The man ate bacon with every meal. You can’t do that!”) and great scenes that blend the action and humor without it being unbelievable (the burials, fighting the cowboys and Phil flipping out, Mitch causing a stampede, and the fun little convos between the characters about things like ice cream and baseball), you come out of this movie finding your smile, just like Mitch does. Curly reminds us that it’s all about that one thing, and how it’s up to us to figure it out. To me, this “one thing” is finding joyous movies like this. Sometimes, no matter how well we’re doing to the outside world, we just need some alone time with our friends to get back on track. I love this message. This level of companionship and the importance of bonding and friendship is at the heart of City Slickers.

This is why we look back at the movie fondly.

Fun Fact: Rick Moranis was originally cast as Phil but had to drop out because of his wife’s illness. According to Billy Crystal, Jack Palance was the original choice for Curly but since he had another film commitment at the time, he offered it to Charles Bronson, though Bronson turned it down because the character dies.