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TOWN & COUNTRY Send This Review to a Friend
Before veering off in a nutty direction, the colorfully cast "Town & Country" amusingly delves into martial infidelity, friendship betrayal and sexual identity. Even when it goes awry, a portion contains a cameo performance by actress Marian Seldes that is profanely hilarious. Although "Town & Country" is much better than the pre-release gossip about it indicated, the filmmakers (writers Michael Laughlin and Buck Henry and director Peter Chelsom) didn't seem to know where to go with the material, and a downward spiral leads to a limp ending.
We first meet Warren Beatty as New York architect Porter Stoddard hiding, apparently nude, behind a sofa and ogling a pretty, nude musician (Nastassja Kinski) with a cello between her legs. In the narration by Stoddard, he swears fidelity to his wife of 25 years, except for this discretion, which he promises himself won't happen again. His wife Ellie (Diane Keaton) is smug in her marital security and considers her husband totally faithful. Likewise, her friend Mona (Goldie Hawn) thinks her husband Griffin (Gary Shandling) is faithful, but one day she follows him as he checks into a motel room with a redhead. She doesn't know the half of it. We see what she doesn't. The ensuing maneuvers and complications are pretty funny for a while, thanks to the caliber of the performances.
The skid occurs when Stoddard and Griffin take a trip to Sun Valley and Stoddard gets involved with a kooky heiress (Andie MacDowell) who has even stranger parents, Charlton Heston as a gun-happy, possessive father and Marian Seldes as his wheelchair-bound, disgruntled wife. Seldes spews profane judgments as to her husband's lack of sexual ability and his gun-toting prowess as well. Any collection of clips capturing the career of the celebrated actress should include what she does here. I'd like to look at just that portion again. But to make the film more cohesive, the whole section with this family should be cut, as it gets to silly and out of tune with the tone of the film's better first part. Ditto for sub-plot material involving Stoddard with Jenna Elfman as a woman in a bait and tackle shop..
There is humor in having Heston play such a gun nut when he is known as the supreme advocate for the National Rifle Association, and having Beatty as Stoddard expound on the loneliness of running around with women as opposed to the solidity of a good marriage, given the actor's bachelor-days proclivities. The last portion of the film, in which Griffin finally spills a secret he has been harboring, is a mess. Admittedly, there's a need to tie up the plot, but some better ideas than what ends up on screen were sorely needed. A New Line Cinema release.
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