Today's entry puts me one movie away from having seen every Oscar winner (in the categories I write about) of the 1990s! The film is City Slickers, winner of the 1992 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (Jack Palance).
Mitch (Billy Crystal) is a radio station advertising salesman in the midst of a mid-life crisis, searching for the meaning or purpose of his life. As a birthday present to him, his two buddies - Phil (Daniel Stern), a newly unemployed and divorcing loser, and Ed (Bruno Kirby), a perpetual adventure-seeker with commitment phobia - take him on a two-week vacation to participate in a cattle drive. Thrown in with a cast of wacky characters and a trail boss (Palance) whose gruff exterior hides a soul full of wisdom, the trio experience zany adventures and hardships, while learning the answers to their respective problems.
The film is entirely a Billy Crystal vehicle, with every scene being a set-up for Crystal to get the punchline, or the drama, as the case may be. It's light-hearted and fun, enjoyable, but shallow. The main characters seem to only be able to relate to each other, or to life itself, through the use of discussions about baseball. They find the answers to all of their problems in the span of their two week vacation, with all of their problems cleared up by the time they get home. Palance was entertaining, but the Oscar here seems to be more an apology for not rewarding him when he was nominated for a similar character in Shane than it was earned on the strength of this performance. City Slickers was an enjoyable way of killing a couple of hours, but not much more than that.
Look for Jake Gyllenhall as Crystal's son, complete with embarrassing early-'90s hair and clothes!
Movie trivia question: One more movie for me to close out the '90s... which film will it be?
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Also, Billy Crystal's catchphrase for the film ("Hello," pronounced "H'lew") was annoying the first time he said it, and it only got worse for the rest of the movie.
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