Directed by: Ron Underwood
Starring: Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Bruno Kirby, Jack Palance, Ron Underwood, Helen Slater
City Slickers takes what could have been a typical fish-out-of-water story and infuses it with the right amount of humor, observation, action, and sentimentality. Three lifelong buddies: Mitch (Crystal), who hates his job selling air time at a radio station, Phil (Stern), a supermarket manager who hates his insufferable wife, and Ed (Kirby), who hates the fact that he's getting older, have lost their inner happy and go on vacation out west to lead a cattle drive. Mitch and Phil are far less enthusiastic about this than Ed, who is forever trying to capture the Fountain of Youth in the form of high-risk vacation ideas. As City Slickers opens, the three are running with the bulls in Pamplona and Mitch is gored in the rear end by one of them.
Mitch mopes around observing that is in a life rut. His wife Barbara (Wettig) is fed up with his kvetching and urges him to go on vacation. ("Go and find your smile"). Phil's wife kicks him out after she learns of his affair with a co-worker. Since poor Phil fakes being asleep most times to avoid any contact with her than absolutely necessary, this is a blessing. Ed has taken on a much younger wife, but can't rid himself of his own nagging insecurities. The cattle drive is supervised by Curly (Palance), a surly trail boss who doesn't much care for "city folk". Palance won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for this role, a role which may seem one-dimensional, but Palance slowly peels away his gruff exterior to reveal a quiet man of dignity and principles. He even stubbornly grows to like Mitch.
Will the three friends work out their issues and finish the cattle drive a lot more fulfilled than when they started? It isn't a spoiler by answering yes, because otherwise, what would be the point?
Because we like these three men, we hope they find their way, and City Slickers surprises us with its heart. Crystal, Kirby, and Stern have impeccable comic chemistry, and Palance nearly steals the film while uttering far fewer words than anyone else.
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