Cowpokes, Crises and Comedy

There’s a classic sequence early on in the uneven new comedy “City Slickers.” Billy Crystal’s Mitch Robbins, who sells commercial time for a local New York radio station, puts in an appearance in his son’s grade-school class to talk about what he does for a living. He’s just turned 39, and he’s fed up with his crummy job; as he talks about it, all his depressed feelings about his life pour out, while the school kids look at him blankly.

Now that Woody Allen no longer cares to be the screen’s reigning fixture of comic Jewish urban Angst , the field is wide open to pretenders to the throne. For many, Crystal was a worthy pretender in “When Harry Met Sally . . .,” although I couldn’t take him in the film. He seemed more like a gagster than an actor, delivering his quips while functioning as his own straight man. In “City Slickers” (citywide), directed by Ron Underwood, Crystal is still not out of the woods, but he’s often very funny. (It helps that he’s got the best lines in the movie.) The snide levity of his awards show TV appearances creeps into his performance here and helps take your mind off the movie’s expanding wishy-washiness.

Joining Crystal are Daniel Stern and Bruno Kirby, playing a trio of longtime buddies who take a two-week vacation from their unrewarding jobs and family hassles to drive cattle from New Mexico to Colorado. Specially designed as a package vacation for city bumpkins, the cattle drive attracts a motley crew of sagebrush-shy greenhorns, including Barry and Ira Shalowitz (Josh Mostel and David Paymer), the founders of a Ben & Jerry’s-type ice-cream empire; a black dentist and his dentist son (Bill Henderson and Phill Lewis), and the group’s sole woman, Bonnie (Helen Slater), who wears her blue jeans well and creates a ruckus with the leering trail hands. Keeping everyone on track is Curly (Jack Palance), the black-garbed trail boss who gives even the cattle the willies.

Plunking these citified types onto the range is not exactly the freshest of gambits, but it’s a funny one all the same. With all the “Dances With Wolves”-inspired hype last year about how the Western was back, it’s fun to see a movie that makes it clearer than ever that the Western is still in limbo. (Dean Semler, who shot “Wolves,” is also the cinematographer here.) It usually signals the end of a career when an actor parodies what he once did seriously, but Palance, doing satiric bad-guy riffs derived from “Shane,” gives the movie its comic high points. Palance is so leathery that he seems all of a piece with his saddle. It’s an indication of how misguided the movie becomes that the filmmakers get rid of him halfway through. The film (rated PG-13) never quite recovers.

Instead, it turns into a mid-life crisis male-bonding movie with assorted wisecracks. Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, the gifted screenwriters of “Splash,” have been on a consciousness-raising track since “Parenthood,” and they probably aren’t being cynical when throwing in all this “understanding” stuff. But they sure aren’t being funny, either. The three ersatz cowboys in “City Slickers” are each given their own personal turmoil to resolve: Mitch comes to terms with his lowered career expectations; Stern’s Phil works through his marital breakup; Kirby’s Ed puts to rest his womanizing and his hatred of his father. Given the film’s grab-bag jokey-ness, this isn’t the sort of baggage we need to see unpacked.

Comedy filmmakers may feel that they are giving audiences “more” when they add on the personal dramas but, unless the serious material grows out of the comedy, it just seems like an aberration. The funny sequences and dumb jokes in “City Slickers” are so much more entertaining than the male-bonding blather that you wonder what the filmmakers had in mind. Did they think they would cheat audiences if they didn’t also throw in the tears and the hugs? In comedy, the only cheat for audiences is not being funny.

‘City Slickers’

Billy Crystal: Mitch Robbins

Daniel Stern: Phil Berquist

Bruno Kirby: Ed Furillo

Jack Palance: Curly

A Castle Rock Entertainment production in association with Nelson Entertainment, distributed by Columbia Pictures. Director Ron Underwood. Producer Irby Smith. Executive producer Billy Crystal. Screenplay by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. Cinematographer Dean Semler. Editor O. Nicholas Brown. Costumes Judy Ruskin. Music Marc Shaiman. Art director Mark Mansbridge. Set decorator Rick Simpson. Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG-13.