If nothing else, City Slickers is a triumph of trend-reading.
After a decade in which middle-American men watched Maximum 'Murican supermen—in some notable cases, Austrian and Belgian supermen—dominate screens and occasionally box offices with fantastical feats of strength and violence, here was a film in which wimpy white-collar WASPs embark on a fantasy quest that turns "real", requiring its heroes to draw on reserves of strength and cunning they didn't know they possessed. The film was also part of a brief western revival following Dances with Wolves (and soon to be followed by Unforgiven and Tombstone). It's unclear how much credit should be given to the filmmakers for capitalizing on their predecessor's success—though their development overlapped, Costner's was long-gestating and earned the derisive nickname "Kevin's Gate" in the media, whose most vocal representatives hated the film until they loved it. In any case, right after the first financially-successful American western in more than a decade wins the Academy Award for Best Picture is probably the optimal window for a crowd-pleasing comic take on the genre.
The film's wisecracking dialogue contains not a mention of the previous decade's musclebound heroes, instead going back a generation or two, before the time when men with names like Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Van Damme acted as avatars of American might, to the halcyon days of John Wayne. The plot is a reworking of the Wayne-starring Cowboys (1972), and the "yeehaw" scene from Red River is explicitly re-enacted as Mitch (Billy Crystal), Phil (Daniel Stern), and Ed (Bruno Kirby) begin their own fantasy-camp cattle drive. Each is undergoing their own particular midlife crisis: overconfident Ed is bored with his beautiful and devoted professional model of a girlfriend, neurotic Phil is splitting with his otherworldly ballbuster of a wife after getting caught impregnating the voice of Lisa Simpson (half his age and an employee), and Mitch is in the midst of a vague, restless malaise that prompts his wife to urge him to "find your smile" (or lose your wife).
The link to an idealized past, when boys were boys and women were Mom, is underlined by the presence of Jack Palance, the still-strapping-at-seventy-two (co-)star of Shane, The Professionals, and other westerns, as lovably crusty trail-boss Curly. (While inspired casting, this is itself representative of the trend towards casting popular old-timers in scene-stealing roles: see old Hollywood comic-romantic lead Don Ameche's late-career comeback in the enormously popular Cocoon (1985), William Hickey in Prizzi's Honor (1985), or Sean Connery in The Untouchables (1987)—like Ameche and Connery, Palance would win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, for which Hickey was also nominated.)
The film reinforces some of the worst tendencies of both classic westerns and '80s action films in its treatment of its minority and women characters and their relation to the white heroes. Note the scene where Mitch, Phil, and Ed meet their co-wranglers, a black father and son (Bill Henderson and Phill Lewis) and two Jewish brothers (Josh Mostel and David Paymer), all of whom immediately subjugate themselves to the protagonists: the son is unduly defensive at both he and his father being Black dentists, leading to a public rebuke from his father, while the Jewish brothers mock their own unappealing appearance, going so far as to explain that they hire models to represent them in their ice cream company's commercials so as not to cause their customers to lose their appetite! That Crystal himself is Jewish is immaterial: there is no mention of the religion of his character, who has the distinctly WASPish name "Mitch Robbins", and the presence of Mostel and Paymer's, "Ira and Barry Shalowitz" (they are based on Ben and Jerry of Ben & Jerry's, both Jewish) seems to be to disabuse the audience of any notion that Mitch might pray like the actor who plays him. He's a stand-in for the nonethnic men who were to make the film a box office hit, and the immediate denigration of the others to establish that, while this guy has some work to do on himself, there are much bigger losers on this cattle drive.
Note also the film's first scene, in which Mitch is getting his ass repaired after an goring injury sustained during the Running of the Bulls. The Spanish doctor is comically non-conversant in English, and Mitch comically reminds him not to sew up his asshole. The doctor grins idiotically in response. (One might be tempted at this point to bring up some of Billy Crystal's race-based pantomime, like his (in)famous Jazzman, or SNL bits like this Negro League sketch with Christopher Guest. But that would be a low blow.)
The drive's lone woman is Bonnie (Helen Slater), who it is soon clear exists to be "won" by Daniel Stern's henpecked Phil. We don't have to wait five minutes for a rape scare involving Bonnie and a couple of drunk cowhands—Mitch appears to be about to get his ass kicked in her defence, until Curly comes in and saves them all—and not long after that for this exchange, which represents the extent of the character's 'significant' dialogue:
BONNIE: I just never understood how you guys can spend so much time discussing baseball. I've been to games, but I don't memorize who played third base for Pittsburgh in 1960.
ALL THREE MEN: Don Hoak.
BONNIE: See, that's exactly what I mean.
MITCH: So what do you and your friends talk about out there?
BONNIE: Well...real life. Relationships. Are they working, are they not? Who's she seeing? Is that working?
Helen Slater is a likeable actress who plays the role better than it reads, but Bonnie is a bland killjoy assembled from cynical clichés whose only character traits revolve around the satisfaction she (and the other women in her life) seek from men. Immediately thereafter Phil makes an emotionally vulnerable comment about his father and Bonnie gives him a look to indicate to us that Yes, I'm Going to Fuck This Guy, and she has served her purpose, as the purpose of Mitch's wife is to give him an ultimatum that will ultimately make him a better husband and father. In discussing the film's capitalization on trends, it is perhaps also worth looking at the genesis of Mitch's wife's direction: "find your smile", which distinctly recalls Joseph Campbell's oft-quoted "follow your bliss", then enjoying a fairly major presence in American popular thought and culture thanks to Campbell's widely-seen 1988 series, The Power of Myth, but infused, that is, "find your smile", with an insipid narcissistic, individualistic quality that perfectly embodies the era's self-help "philosophies".
Phil's comment about his father leads into a conversation that clarifies the theme introduced by the Wayne whoops and developed amongst Curly's cows, in which Bruno Kirby's Ed delivers a monologue about banishing his philandering father from the house for disrespecting his mother and the family. If the film's women are defined by the men in their lives, those men are defined by their need to confront bad fathers, and live up to good ones. The sometimes futile nature of this quest is acknowledged when it's revealed that the whole population is slated to be killed for food. The only creature that can be saved is Norman, the adorable calf through whose birth Mitch and Curly, the surrogate father and symbol of the characters' masculine idealism, bonded.
Thus, while the prospective deaths of hundreds of animals somewhat helps offset the syrupy sentiment, the prevailing feeling is still one of sickly sweet sub-Spielbergian schmaltz, which is to say: the most profitable trend of all.
Norman is still with the family as the sequel, City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold (1994), opens. He runs alongside Billy Crystal as Billy Crystal jogs and does schtick. At least E.T. was saved that indignity.
The film is again involves the re-enactment of an old western, namely The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Or at least it would, if The Treasure of the Sierra Madre were a western. But, as everyone knows, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is not a western.
On the level of plot and character logic, The Legend of Curly's Gold might well be one of the most nonsensical franchise sequels ever made. But it's definitely funnier than the original. Jon Lovitz alone gets more laughs than the whole cast of the first film combined, even Palance, and is especially funnier than the dearly departed Bruno Kirby, whom he replaced (Kirby reportedly demanded script changes) and who has been funny elsewhere but was dead weight there. While watching City Slickers II I even had a bigger laugh suddenly remembering the big gag from Beerfest that makes fun of City Slickers II than I did during the entirety of City Slickers I.
I am genuinely curious what those who would disagree found so gut-busting in the first film. The montage of the protagonists trying on cowboys hats that don't fit very well? Billy Crystal inexpertly roping cattle? The big comic dialogue scene around the fire in which Josh Mostel's character, with an ironic tough-guy showdown demeanor, demonstrates his uncanny talent for recommending the perfect ice cream for a particular meal? I guess Palance earns some smiles barking out to Crystal "I crap bigger than you" and "Day's not over yet", in response to "Kill anyone today?".
Anywaze the paternal anxieties have been replaced by fraternal anxieties, Lovitz plays Crystal's annoying freeloading brother, yada yada yada they reconnect. I wrote this whole review like a year and a half ago and this is as far as I got. Anyway I like treasure hunt bullshit and goofy twin bullshit and like I said this one's funnier. There are no women or minorities at all this time around, which if you ask me is preferable to what they were previously subjected to. And you definitely can ask me, because I speak for all women and minorities.
