Starring: Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Jon Lovitz, Jack Palance, Patricia Wettig
Here is the wholly unnecessary sequel to City Slickers, the 1991 hit film where three lifelong friends go on a Western adventure to find their inner happy. They succeeded, and part two picks up one year later. Remember the calf Crystal helped deliver in the first film? He has grown into a cow, and accompanies Crystal's character Mitch on jogs.
Only two of the three friends return for the sequel, with Bruno Kirby's Ed noticeably absent from these proceedings. He is replaced by Glen (Lovitz), Mitch's ne'er-do-well brother who can quote lines from The Godfather chapter and verse. Lovitz does what he can, but he can't quite replace what Kirby brought to the table in the first film. Bringing Kirby back might not have mattered anyway, because City Slickers II is primarily interested in finding long lost gold buried somewhere in Nevada by the father of Curly, the unforgettable trail boss who died in the first movie.
Curly is dead to be sure, but Palance returns as Curly's twin brother Duke, who joins Mitch, Phil, and Ed on the quest for the millions in treasure. Duke sounds and looks like Curly, but is meaner and perhaps more sinister. Or is he? He arbitrarily oscillates from nice to mean at the drop of a hat. One thing I know about Duke: Curly, he ain't. So, what we have in City Slickers II are a bunch of guys trying to enrich themselves with long dialogue exchanges and bloated action sequences thrown in to kill time. There is even a tiresome stampede where Mitch and Glen nearly drive their horse-drawn wagon off a cliff. The map (which was tucked under Curly's hat which Mitch saved as a keepsake after burying him in the desert) is forever in jeopardy of being burned, blown away, or lost. Yawn.
Do we even care if the gold is found? City Slickers II isn't a continuation of the original story, but an innocuous tangent. The ending leaves open a possibility of a third film, but after twenty-six years, I think we can safely assume there won't be one.
Directed by: Paul Weiland
Starring: Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Jon Lovitz, Jack Palance, Patricia Wettig
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