Billy Crystal and Jack Palance are back in the saddle again in CITY SLICKERS II, the sequel to the 1991 surprise smash. This amiable comedy has laughs, but can't compete with the warmth and charm of the original.
A year has passed since Mitch Robbins (Billy Crystal) "found his smile" during a recreational cattle drive, and his life couldn't be going better--until today, his 40th birthday. He's going to have to fire his best friend, Phil Berquist (Daniel Stern). His free-loading, good-for-nothing brother,
Glen (Jon Lovitz), has shown up for a visit. And, worst of all, Mitch is plagued with nightmares about his mentor, Curly Washburn (Jack Palance), who died on the trail. After finding a treasure map in the lining of Curly's old hat, Mitch, Phil and Glen head for the Nevada desert in search of $20
million in gold.
Although he's been sworn to secrecy, Phil talks about the treasure in front of couple of low-life shopkeepers, who ambush the trio on their first day out. The bad guys are foiled by what appears to be Curly's ghost, but turns out to be Duke Washburn (Jack Palance), Curly's twin brother, who knew
about the map and had been following Mitch. Duke and the city slickers team up. Things go well--aside from some humorous clashes between Duke and Mitch--until they get caught in a stampede of wild horses and lose all their supplies and the map. All seems lost, until Glen reveals that he's
memorized the map. They press on and, after a cold and hungry night, find the entrance to an abandoned mine.
Inside, Mitch finds the gold, but before he can do a celebratory dance, the gang is set upon by thieving cowboys. One takes a shot at Mitch, but Glen jumps in and takes the bullet--whereupon they discover they've been had. The bullet was just a paint pellet, the thieves are actors, and the gold
is painted lead. It turns out the whole treasure map was just another fantasy vacation concocted by the late Curly. That night in a Las Vegas hotel room, Mitch accepts that he'll never be fabulously wealthy, but finds value in the new closeness he's achieved with Phil and, especially, Glen. Just
then, Duke bursts in and tells Mitch he had a missing piece of the map all along, and slams a gold bar down on the table.
CITY SLICKERS was a rarity in the breed of feel-good comedies: Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel's script had appealing characters, plenty of wryly effective humor, and a fresh take on some of the contradictions of 20th-century masculinity. Unfortunately, the sequel can't match the original's
emotional arc--since Mitch has already found himself, there's simply less at stake. Nor is there anything here to equal the first film's psychological resonance (e.g., the now-famous calf-birthing scene). The male-bonding, such as it is, takes place at the point of a gun, while the comedy (this
time from a script by Crystal, Ganz and Mandel) depends on Crystal's now well-established persona as the wise-cracking New Yorker. Jon Lovitz, who can be very funny playing irritating characters, is underused.
At best, this picture is a reasonably pleasant diversion--which should come as no surprise, given all the talent behind it. However, it is also uninvolving and forgettable--qualities that, in a sequel, only tarnish the memory of the original.
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