# Out-of-Towners, The (1999)

### reviewed by
James Sanford

Like a paper dress or a Bobby Sherman 45, Neil Simon's "The Out of Towners" is one of those relics of the early 1970s that hasn't improved with age. Seen today, the Jack Lemmon/Sandy Dennis comedy about an Ohio couple who suffer almost every conceivable humiliation during their weekend in New York comes off as a grating one-note bore that relies entirely on a perceived universal aversion toward NYC and its residents for its humor.

At least the 1999 version of "The Out-of-Towners" (the original title was not hypenated, but this one is; go figure) is canny enough to acknowledgethat attitudes toward the Big Apple have changed dramatically in the last 30 years. "I only hated New York when it was hip to hate New York," scoffs advertising exec Henry Clark (Steve Martin) when his wife Nancy (Goldie Hawn) reminds him how much he dislikes Gotham.

Lifelong Ohioans Henry and Nancy head east when he's offered an interview at a prominent Manhattan agency. Their agenda is to fly into the city, stay overnight, go to the meeting and return home. Of course, if everything went according to the plan, there wouldn't be much of a movie.

How much you enjoy this "Out-of-Towners" will have a lot to do with how many times you can laugh at what amounts to a series of variations on the same joke. The script by Marc Lawrence (based on Simon's original) is essentially one minor catastrophe after another - flight problems, car problems, hotel problems, cab problems, etc. - for Henry and Nancy to muddle through. Some of these are funny, some are not, almost all are utterly predictable.

The movie is funniest when it diverges from the woe-is-us concept to allow Hawn and Martin a little comic breathing room. It's much more amusing to see Hawn attempt to seduce an L.A. smoothie (Mark McKinney) or to tell a guy she mistakes for Andrew Lloyd Webber how "Cats" "hit so home for us" than it is to see her scurrying away from an attack dog or creating unintentional havoc on a plane. Martin's best moments come at the beginning and end of the picture, in an airport goodbye scene with his son and in an amusing homage to Milos Forman's film of "Hair."

Aside from John Cleese as a wonderfully starchy (at least in public) hotel manager and a wonderful little joke about a sedan's faulty navigational system, the rest of "The Out-of-Towners" is uninspired if not unpleasant. The picture would have had a bit more punch if director Sam Weisman had any clues about staging slapstick sequences. The physical comedy here is overblown and clumsy.

Nor does Weisman seem to have had much control over his extras. The background people in this movie, particularly in the Logan Airport scenes, often seem to be trying to steal the focus away from Martin and Hawn. The result is so distracting it's hard to believe nobody called for a reshoot.

    James Sanford

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