I Crap Bigger Than You

Continuing my look back at the films of 1991....
City Slickers is the cinematic equivalent of going to the dentist. It offers few surprises, and while you watch it you feel kind of a pleasant numbness, and it's over before you know it. This is also the kind of movie that you can see the development history: "Billy Crystal is an urban guy who goes on a cattle drive and learns the lessons of life." All they needed was a few supporting characters and some Borscht Belt jokes, and voila! A movie!

What lifts this film above the dreadful are in those supporting characters. Daniel Stern and the recently departed Bruno Kirby provide satisfying counterparts to Crystal, who is one of the more annoying actors in films. Crystal's character, our hero, is a schlump who feels sorry for himself and mopes through the first two-thirds of picture, at least when he's not flinging zingers that would make Henny Youngman retch. The overall feeling with him is a hope that he will somehow die in a stampede. Stern and Kirby, though, create more interesting characters. The big surprise in this film, though, is Jack Palance as Curly, the leathery trail boss. Palance won an Oscar for this performance, which certainly no one would have predicted before the film was released. What surprised me on the second viewing was actually how little he is in the film (and he dies about half way through) but his presence is still what is remembered as the closing credits roll.

The writing is all formulaic, but there are a few nice touches. Stern's speech about how baseball is important to him is nice (in contrast to Crystal's about going to Yankee Stadium for the first time, which is awful) and Palance's tale about the only woman he ever loved was quite poignant.

One interesting note--the boy who plays Crystal's son, about ten years old, looked very familiar. Sure enough, it was Jake Gyllenhaal, who fifteen years later would quite a different movie about cowboys.