A Film Review by James Berardinelli
Cast: Steve Martin, Goldie Hawn, John Cleese, Mark McKinney
Director: Sam Weisman
Producers: Robert W. Cort, Robert Evans, David Madden, Teri Schwartz
Screenplay: Marc Lawrence, based on the screenplay by Neil Simon
Cinematography: John Bailey
Music: Marc Shaiman
U.S. Distributor: Paramount Pictures
The 1970 version of The Out-of-Towners, starring Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis, was an amusing-but-slight motion picture. The 1999 remake, featuring Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn, retains the second half of that hyphenated adjective while losing the first part. Although this interpretation of the movie is not completely without laughs, all of the funny parts are shown in the TV ads. Despite their solid reputation in comedy, Hawn and Martin are surprisingly flat. The only genuine humor is generated by John Cleese, but he's only on screen for about 10-15 minutes. The rest of the film can charitably be called unremarkable. A more honest description would be to label it as mirthless, pointless, and banal.
It has been many years since I saw the original Neil Simon-scripted movie, but I have fond memories of the production, because it made me laugh consistently, a task that is beyond the reach of too many so-called comedies. And, although the new version of the film remains faithful to the intent and structure of the original, it illustrates that there are some things that don't work the second time around. Maybe the problem is that Martin and Hawn are too restrained. Maybe the problem is that the comic vignettes have been injected with so much stupidity that they lose the power to amuse. Or maybe the problem is that no one's heart is really in the production. For The Out-of-Towners to work, we have to care about the main characters. However, while I connected with and found myself rooting for Lemmon and Dennis many years ago, this time around, I just wanted Martin and Hawn to go away.
The only thing that saves The Out-of-Towners from being unwatchable is the presence of the always-reliable John Cleese, who may be the closest thing this industry has to a comic genius. Few comedians working today haven't been influenced to one degree or another by the former "Monty Python" star. Here, he's not on screen long enough to save the movie, but he does provide several worthwhile moments. "Python" fans will chuckle at the scene where, in full drag, Cleese does some high-kicking reminiscent of his work in the "Ministry of Silly Walks" sketch. And "Fawlty Towers" aficionados will recognize that the character Cleese plays, the manager of a posh New York City hotel, is really just Basil Fawlty transplanted to another continent.
The Out-of-Towners is the second Murphy's Law movie to descend upon audiences within a several week period (the other being the Ben Affleck/Sandra Bullock romantic road picture, Forces of Nature, which, like The Out-of-Towners, was written by Marc Lawrence). Henry and Nancy Clark(Martin and Hawn) have left their home in Ohio to go to New York so that Henry can look for a better job. Now that the children have departed the nest, they are free to leave their quiet neighborhood for the big city if the right employment opportunity comes along. From the beginning, however, things go wrong. Their plane is diverted to Boston. Their luggage is lost. They then have difficulty finding transportation to Manhattan. Once there, they are mugged, and, when they get to the hotel where they're supposed to be staying, the brusque, stuck-up manager (Cleese) cheerfully informs them that their credit card has been rejected. And that's before they sit in on a sex therapy session and have a run-in with the police.
For director Sam Weisman (George of the Jungle), this is not his finest hour. Saddled with a moronic script and a recycled story idea, he proves incapable of salvaging much out of this mess. In fact, by showing little understanding of comic timing, he just makes matters worse. In an age when every film is fair game for a remake, The Out-of-Towners still seems like an unlikely candidate, and the complete failure of the 1999 version shows why. Comedy that was well-suited to an earlier generation doesn't work as well today, and the ungainly attempts by Lawrence to update it result in a botched screenplay. Lifeless performances by Martin and Hawn, who lack any semblance of chemistry with each other, put the final nail in the coffin.
© 1999 James Berardinelli