City Slickers (Collector's Edition)
I'd never go as far as to call myself a cowboy, well cowgirl but I like to think that I have a little better than general idea about horses and what working a ranch would be like. I mean, I know I would make plenty of mistakes, but I don't think it would be as hard for me to make the transition from city life to life on a ranch. Again, I'm not really a rancher and I'm far from being a complete city girl, I guess I'm just country enough to be able to laugh watching these kinds of movies without getting too frustrated with some LA writer's take on three city guys spending two weeks trying to driving cattle.
It's the end of the weekend though and I've spent almost every hour that I've not been in the store trying to play catch up and get ahead. I'm doing this in hopes of being able to make my trip to Ohio a true vacation. I mean lets face it, I need a vacation. I guess I just feel like the mood is right for a comedy, I had a busy but not awfully stressful day at work and now I just want to relax a little bit.
After having watched the movie:
(Possible spoilers below)
To be completely honest I expected the movie to be more about the three guys: Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, and Bruno Kirby learning how to be cowboys and stumbling to figure out the lifestyle. So naturally I was surprised when I realized how little amount of time was spent watching the boys trying to learn to be cowboys. I kind of expected to watch them learn how to ride a horse, get thrown off a couple of times and land in mud at least once. Which in a way I'm kind of glad the movie took the route it did focusing more around the guys trying to figure out which direction they were heading in life.
One of the things that I've noticed though about the 365 Movie Challenge, aside from getting a better perspective on filmmaking and watching movies that I had never seen before, has been a greater appreciation for some of the actors who seem to go unnoticed. I mean, it wasn't until I watched Dragnet that I really realized what an amazing actor and comedian Dan Akyroyd is. City Slickers though, leaves me feeling a little like Billy Crystal continues to just play himself in a lot of his roles. Or at least the roles I've seen him in. The odd thing about it though is that I'm okay when Billy Crystal does it, but I find it incredibly irritating when Lindsay Lohan does it and we call it acting.
Basically, I don't think I really understood what the movie was going to be about before I started watching it. I didn't think it would be about making sense of your life and realizing what matters most to you. Instead I had expected it to be a silly comedy about three guys from the city trying to learn how to be cowboys. It made me think back to an article I started reading early today that Merly Streep did for Vanity Fair. I haven't finished the article yet, but what I've taken from the article is how Merly Streep responded to all of the success (box office success included) she has had as an older actress. Which tends to be rare. She still gets these great parts in movies and brings a youthful sense to so many of them. I just love her. Anyways, the thing that Streep pointed out was that there has always been an audience for these kind of movies, movies that older women as an audience would be interested in, they've just never really been marketed to them before. The best example: It's Complicated. It might not be 'THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE' but it's fun, and interesting to see an older woman involved in that kind of love triangle. It's really the first time we're seeing women in these kind of roles. City Slickers is kind of comparable to the same idea, in my mind at least. When something can be a comedy and handle semi-serious subject matter it's a win. Market the movie more as a comedy and throw in some underlying but serious subject matter, and it's a more marketable movie for an older male audience.
Final thoughts: The movie wasn't what I had expected it to be, but I really liked it. Of course being a girl, my favorite part was watching Billy Crystal bond with Norman the adorable calf. Although I have to say, I would have been completely satisfied having not watch the cow give birth. I thought it was gross, but I kind of want a calf to call my own now.
OFFICIAL COUNT 76 DOWN 289 TO GO
Next up: Amelie
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