City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold *** (1994, Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Jon Lovitz, Jack Palance) – Classic Movie Review 1726

Billy Crystal and Daniel Stern, re-creating their roles as the hapless Manhattan dudes Mitch Robbins and Phil Berquist from the 1991 comedy Western blockbuster City Slickers, are back looking for laughs in the great Wild West outdoors. Director Paul Weiland’s 1994 sequel is shakily written and less than the original, but still always pleasant and sometimes really funny.

This time Mitch is settling down to have a great 40th birthday night with his wife when he by chance discovers a treasure map that belonged to Jack Palance’s now dead old cowboy Curly. Together with Phil and his black sheep brother Glen, he sets out to find Curly’s hidden gold in the desert of Arizona.

The screenplay by the original writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel is contrived but amusing enough and so is new guy Jon Lovitz, who takes over from Bruno Kirby as the third slicker, this time playing Crystal’s brother Glen. But there’s a sense of strain with the comedy this time and the original magic isn’t quite there.

Nevertheless, happily, Crystal and the gang are still entertaining company, and it’s especially good that City Slickers’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner Jack Palance rises from his character’s death in part one to play Curly’s twin, Bud. Patricia Wettig as Crystal’s wife Barbara, Noble Willingham, David Paymer and Josh Mostel also return from the original.

And it helps too that it’s a handsome looking movie, impressively shot by cinematographer Adrian Biddle, mainly in Moab, Utah, where John Wayne and John Ford filmed their classic Western movies.

Palance died on November 10 2006, aged 87.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1726

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