City Slickers 91 (1991)

"A fun outing, with Jack Palance's Oscar-winning performance the main attraction.  Bob Bloom, Journal and Courier
"Billy Crystal is hilarious as the fish-out-of-water cowpoke.  Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone, TheMovieChicks.com
"Enjoyable comedy...[with a] generous array of funny lines and good moments...  Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide
"...a sentimental, big-laughs western...  Rita Kempley, The Washington Post
"Fun, funny movie. Jack Palance is great.  Staci Layne Wilson, Fantastica Daily

Editor's Note When a thoroughly urbanized executive is struggling to find meaning in his life, his two best friends find the perfect cure: a fantasy cowboy vacation. The three friends then rope and ride their way down a trail that leads to a better understanding of themselves and each other. Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, and Bruno Kirby are exceptional as the three fish-out-of-water cowpokes, but Jack Palance steals the show in an Academy Award-winning performance. CITY SLICKERS is followed by its sequel, CITY SLICKERS II: THE LEGEND OF CURLY'S GOLD.

	Billy Crystal
	Bruno Kirby
	Daniel Stern
	David Paymer
	Helen Slater
	Jack Palance
	Jeffrey Tambor
	Patricia Wettig
	Babaloo Mandel - Writer
	Billy Crystal - Executive Producer
	Dean Semler - Cinematographer
	Irby Smith - Producer
	Lawrence G. Paull - Production Designer
	Lowell Ganz - Writer
	Marc Shaiman - Original Music By
	Mark W. Mansbridge - Art Director
	O. Nicholas Brown - Editor
	Ron Underwood - Director
	Thomas Richard Sharp - Original Music By

Three male friends, facing their 40th birthdays and experiencing midlife crises, decide they need time away from their "soft" city lives. Fans of old Western films, particularly John Wayne's RED RIVER, they decide to vacation at a dude ranch, where they will be responsible for a two-week-long cattle drive through the Colorado hills. Along the way the urban cowboys encounter bad weather; macho, gun-wielding ranchers; and pregnant cattle, but they finish the drive with their lives back on track. New York Times
"...Cheery, earnest....[Palance provides] some unexpectedly touching moments..." 06/07/1991 p.C18

Entertainment Weekly
"...[Watch it] to catch Crystal's next clippety-clip zinger..." -- Rating: B 11/04/1994 pp.78-9

Variety 7 of 10
The setup is sheer simplicity, as Billy Crystal, coming to grips with the doldrums of midlife thanks to his 39th birthday, is convinced by his wife (Patricia Wettig) and two best friends (Daniel Stern, Bruno Kirby) to take off for two weeks on a ranch driving cattle across the west...The childhood fantasy comes to life in a number of ways, perhaps foremost in the presence of gnarled trail boss Curly (Jack Palance), a figure always seemingly backlit in larger-than-life silhouettes...The other cowboy wannabes include a father-and-son dentist team (Bill Henderson, Phill Lewis), fraternal ice-cream tycoons (David Paymer, Josh Mostel) a beautiful woman (Helen Slater) who braved the trip on her own. A series of increasingly absurd events lead to central trio toward an ultimate challenge that turns the vacation into a journey of self-discovery...Crystal gets plenty of chance to crack wise while he, Stern and Kirby engage in playful and not-so-playful banter - Stern coming off a recently (and publicly) failed marriage while the womanizing Kirby grapples with his own fear of fidelity. Director Ron Underwood (who made his feature debut on Tremors) generally keeps the herd moving at a fine pace.

Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
"City Slickers" comes packaged as one kind of movie - a slapstick comedy about white-collar guys on a dude ranch - and it delivers on that level while surprising me by being much more ambitious, and successful, than I expected. This is the proverbial comedy with the heart of truth, the tear in the eye along with the belly laugh. It's funny, and it adds up to something...What brings these scenes to life is the quality of the dialogue, by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel ("Parenthood"), with additional lines that sound a lot like Crystal. There are moments of insight, of secrets sincerely shared, of the kind of philosophical speculation that's encouraged by life on the range...Ron Underwood's direction is professional and focused; all of the subplots, like Crystal's love for a baby calf he helps deliver, pay off at the end..."City Slickers" is like "Parenthood" in the way it deals with everyday issues of living in an unforced way that doesn't get in the way of the humor, and yet sets the movie up for a genuine emotional payoff at the end. And the male bonding among Crystal, Stern and Kirby is unforced and convincing. There are so many ways this movie could have gone wrong - with gratuitous action scenes, forced dialogue or contrived showdowns - that it's sort of astonishing, how many ways it finds to go right. - Roger Ebert