Review of City Slickers

Introduction

When Mitch Robbins celebrates his 40th birthday, he enters a midlife crisis – he is unhappy with his job, his age and his life in general. However, his best friends Phil and Ed decide to take him one last holiday to recapture their youth – on a cattle drive across the American Midwest. At first it seems crazy: how can these three city slickers expect to cope in the prairie? However, once they get their spurs on, they start learning some life lessons…

Video

The image on this DVD is actually quite good. The colours are vibrant and there is generally a high level of detail throughout. This is not the best example of DVD picture in the world, but this particular movie is unlikely to look much better, even in a brand spanking new Special Edition, if it ever gets released.

Audio

The soundtrack is only presented in 2.0, and it’s not one of the better examples of stereo either. There is little use of surround effects, and the volume stays pretty much constant throughout, never rising even in action scenes or emotional moments. However, the score is excellent - a great example of a typically rousing piece of music just made for Westerns.

Features

A little disappointingly, the solitary extra is the original theatrical trailer, which is of visably poorer quality than the main feature. Strangely enough, the trailer gives away almost every major plot event in the whole movie! And it uses most of the funniest gags too – perhaps a need for a spoiler alert here: watch the movie first!

Conclusion

City Slickers is a very good film, combining raucous comedy with a touching storyline – much like another of my favourite comedies, Groundhog Day. Although this is mainly a Billy Crystal vehicle (and anyone who has seen him hosting the Oscars will know he can be extremely funny), all three main actors put in good performances as middle-aged men who should know better. However, Crystal’s lines are by far what’s funniest about the movie. Jack Palance also puts in a wonderful, Oscar-winning performance as Curly, the ‘last of the cowboys’ who teaches Mitch the meaning of life – a rare award from the Academy to a comedy, although his is not really a comedic performance.

If you haven’t yet seen this film, do so, and you won’t be disappointed. However, this very entertaining movie deserves a more entertaining DVD – maybe we’ll get an SE in the future once the studio has exhausted all possible sales from this version. A commentary by Crystal would be great, as he has recorded some good ones in the past.