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THE OUT-OF-TOWNERS Send This Review to a Friend
When you have Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn and throw in John Cleese for good measure, you are sure to get laughs. Such seasoned performers guarantee a certain level of entertainment despite some dull chunks of the forced plotting and situations in Marc Lawrence's screenplay based upon Neil Simon's original. The 1970 version starred Jack Lemmon as the Ohioan in New York for a job interview and Sandy Dennis as his wife, with Arthur Hiller directing. Although often very funny, that film was also a mixed bag.
Some 30 years later the update, directed by Sam Weisman, has its funny moments. Martin and Hawn are a nifty team as rubes who have their luggage diverted, their money stolen by a con man with a gun and their one remaining credit card overdrawn, while events generally conspire to screw up their trip to New York. So long as they are doing their comic shticks they are occasionally on target. One pathetic exception is the silliness of dangling dangerously from an electrical sign high up on the outside of a hotel.
John Cleese adds mirth as the snooty hotel manager who tosses them out, but a little blackmail helps when Hawn and Martin spy Cleese in a private moment giving vent to his passion for dressing in women's clothes. The film strains to keep up the basic joke about visitors coping with the Big Apple. There's one very funny scene at the Tavern on the Green, although part of the price for the gag is having to look at Mayor Giuliani yet again. But that's indicative of the problem with the film as a whole: How much are you willing to endure as the price for enjoying the good stuff? A Paramount Pictures release.
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