Director: Ron Underwood
Screenplay: Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mendel
Starring: Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Bruno Kirby, Patricia Wettig, Helen Slater, Jack Palance, Lindsay Crystal, Noble Willingham, Tracey Walter, Josh Mostel, David Paymer, Bill Henderson, Phill Lewis, Kyle Secor
Country: United States
Running Time: 114 min
Year: 1991
BBFC Certificate: 12
Actor Jack Palance had a wonderful big screen career lasting around 50 years, including some leading roles but mostly supporting turns. Debuting in Elia Kazan’s Panic in the Streets, he performed in a range of memorable roles from Western Shane, Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt, and Amicus horror anthology Torture Garden, to a role as The Joker-to-be’s boss Carl Grissom in Tim Burton’s Batman and many more in between and beyond.
Just a couple of years into his career, Palance would receive back-to-back Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominations for his roles in Sudden Fear in 1952 and Shane the following year, but he would have to wait until 1991 and third time lucky to win, taking home the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role as Curly in the 1991 Western comedy City Slickers, which has just received a welcome and stacked release on Blu-ray from Arrow Video.
Directed by Tremors director Ron Underwood, City Slickers follows Mitch (Billy Crystal) who is approaching middle age and is unhappy in his job as a radio advertising salesman and struggling to find his smile, realising that he and his pals are using their frequent adventure trips to escape their boring lives. As well as Mitch’s unhappiness at his lot in life, his friends also have issues they’re trying to escape: Phil (Daniel Stern) is in a loveless marriage to his wife Arlene (Karla Tamburrelli) and Ed (Bruno Kirby) is unwilling to settle down with his new wife Kim (Walker Brandt).
Phil and Ed surprise Mitch with a 39th birthday gift of a two-week cattle drive from New Mexico to Colorado for the trio to enjoy, during which they meet ranch owner Clay Stone (Palance), who runs the adventure experience, and a group of fellow cattle drivers. What follows are the trio’s experiences with nature, human conflict and finding themselves during the fortnight away from their daily lives.
The film opens with a brief but hilarious sequence of Mitch and his pals taking part in the Pamplona bull run in Spain, before some neat animated opening credits and a couple of brief scenes post the bull run, see us fast-forwarding 12 months and plunging us into the trio’s current plight of their unhappy lives before they depart on their adventure herding cattle.
Other standout sequences include Mitch delivering a bleak life lesson to his son’s class, a fantastic swooping shot that introduces us to the cattle ranch where we meet fellow cattle ranchers, our central trio spooking cattle while making coffee with a loud grinder, an exhilarating and tense scene where the trio are trying to rescue cows from a river during a downpour of rain, a verbal showdown about ice cream shot like a Western standoff, and Norman, the cutest calf you’ll see, who pops up in some fun sequences.
There are also some really funny gags throughout, thanks to a good script. That script also provides a lot of insight into the characters, and is perceptive about midlife crises, faithfulness during marriage – Mitch is committed to being completely faithful, whilst his pals have had varying degrees of indiscretions or thoughts of such – and finding one’s self and smile when lost or suffering a midlife crisis. There’s plenty of perceptiveness amongst the jokes and sheer entertainment of the cattle ranch.
Billy Crystal was seemingly everywhere in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the likes of The Princess Bride, Throw Momma from the Train, When Harry Met Sally…, and City Slickers and its sequel City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold. He plays Mitch well, delivering the numerous one-liner gags with aplomb and providing a warm, endearing and easy to like central character. The film was Crystal’s idea and he executive produced it and commissioned the two screenwriters, so it was clearly a project he was fond of. His pals are played by Stern and Kirby equally well and the trio together complement each other well, going through their own journey as individuals and a group of friends during the course of the film.
But this is Palance’s picture whenever he’s on screen. From the moment he arrives in a great entrance sequence through to his final scene in the film, he is absolutely brilliant. It’s a fabulous performance. It’s not Palance’s best for me, look to some of his early works for those, but I’m glad that he received an Oscar at some point his career, and whilst it may not be his best for me, it’s certainly a worthy performance and a highlight of the film.
The supporting cast is equally good, with particular mention for Helen Slater, who plays fellow cattle driver Bonnie, with whom Phil starts a relationship. Special mention also for two others who appear; Yeardley Smith, who has effectively a cameo as an employee of Phil, will be well known to fans of The Simpsons as the voice of Lisa, whilst future star Jake Gyllenhaal plays one of Mitch’s children.
The film looks fantastic, helped no end by the gorgeous on-location filming for the cattle drive, which were predominantly shot in New Mexico and Durango, Colorado. It looks beautiful and there are some really breathtaking vistas and locations that feature throughout. Marc Shaiman’s score also well-serves the film, supporting the emotional highs and more heartwarming and poignant moments well.
The film was a huge success, both critically but also commercially, grossing around $179 million against a budget of $26 million and was followed three years later by that aforementioned sequel, City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold.
In closing, City Slickers is a heartwarming, frequently funny and entertaining modern comedy Western which features an Academy Award winning performance by Jack Palance, and a brilliant cast that’s on fine form, headlined by a very likeable and fun performance by Billy Crystal. It’s set amongst gorgeous locations and is filled with some great one-liners and memorable scenes. The film holds up well and is great fun.
Film: 
City Slickers is released on 19 January 2026 on limited edition Blu-ray by Arrow Video. The new 2K restoration, taken from a 4K scan, looks generally very good throughout. Detail is rich, the colour scheme is natural, and those gorgeous vistas on the cattle drive look draw dropping, though the odd shot or two feels soft. It’s a strong transfer overall though, ably supported by very good audio.
Limited edition contents:
2K restoration from a 4K scan
High definition (1080p) Blu-Ray presentation
Original lossless stereo audio and optional DTS-HS MA 5.1 surround audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Audio commentary with director Ron Underwood and actors Billy Crystal and Daniel Stern
Go Cowboy!, a newly filmed interview with director Ron Underwood
Top of the Class, a newly filmed interview with actor Robert Costanzo
Country Bumpkin, a newly filmed interview with actor Kyle Secor
Escape to the Country, a newly filmed interview with actor Josh Mostel
Back in the Saddle: City Slickers Revisited, an archival behind-the-scenes featurette with insights and interviews from the cast and director
Bringing In the Script: Writing City Slickers, an archive interview with Billy Crystal, screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel
A Star is Born: An Ode to Norman, an archive interview on how Norman’s birth was filmed
The Real City Slickers, an archival featurette where guests share why they chose a working ranch for their dream vacation
Deleted scenes
Theatrical trailer
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Hadley
Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Barry Forshaw
The archival audio commentary features director Ron Underwood and two of the stars, Billy Crystal and Daniel Stern, and sees the trio having a great time looking back on the film, sharing some fabulous recollections. They play off each other well and share some wonderful anecdotes. It’s a hoot of a commentary.
The new interview with director Underwood runs for 26 minutes and sees him sharing the concept for the film, the script revisions, filming the movie, his favourite memories and plenty more. It’s a really good interview, with one of the highlights being Underwood sharing that Rick Moranis was signed up to play the Daniel Stern role but sadly had to leave the project due to personal reasons to care for his ill wife.
Actor Robert Costanzo provides a warm 17-minute reflection on working on the film, in which he played Sal Morelli. Costanzo shares reflections on the film and his career in a new interview. It’s an entertaining piece.
Actor Kyle Secor, who plays Jeff, one of the cattle ranchers who work at the ranch, provides an interesting look into his acting career, the roles he played before City Slickers, and his thoughts on making the film in question, during a new 19-minute interview. There are some interesting insights about conflict on the set, towards the end of the shoot. It’s my favourite of the new actor interviews.
Rounding out the new interviews is one with actor Josh Mostel, who portrays one of the most memorable fellow cattle ranchers, Barry. The 16-minute piece is similar in theme to the others, starting by looking at how Mostel got into acting, before moving into his memories of working on City Slickers. It’s another good new interview, which features some interesting anecdotes from Mostel about working with Robert Mitchum.
The rest of the disc contains a range of archival pieces. First, Back in the Saddle: City Slickers Revisited, runs for almost 30 minutes and features a good run through the genesis of the film and some of the sequences with a number of cast and crew members, including director Underwood and stars Crystal and Stern. It’s a good archival piece.
Bringing In the Script: Writing City Slicker again features Crystal in an archive piece, which also features interviews with screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel and director Underwood. It runs for 21 minutes and gives a good analysis of the story, why it works and some of the key moments. It’s another solid archival featurette.
A Star is Born: An Ode to Norman is a six-minute archival interview about how the incredibly cute calf Norman’s birth was filmed. It’s a short but fun piece about one of my favourite characters in the film.
The Real City Slickers is a nine-minute short which looks at cattle ranching in real life. It’s a brief but nice inclusion that I enjoyed and made me want to go on my own cattle ranching holiday.
Two deleted scenes are provided, the first featuring archival commentary from Underwood, who reveals that very little footage went unused in the final film. The first scene features a cattle stampede that our trio of heroes cause after arriving at the ranch. The second scene features archival intro from screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel and sees Mitch offering to help two of his fellow cattle ranchers, Ira and Barry, with a commercial for their ice cream after returning home. The scenes are played separately, and total around three minutes. Both are nice inclusions.
A three-minute trailer concludes the on-disc package and took me right back to being a kid as I saw this so many times on videos I rented as a child.
I wasn’t provided with the booklet to comment on.
In closing, Arrow have provided a strong package for City Slickers with an excellent new commentary, almost 90 minutes of new interviews, and a wealth of archival featurettes. The film remains a funny, heartfelt, poignant and entertaining modern Western that is well worth seeking out. The package provided by Arrow, which includes a generally great transfer, makes it easy to recommend.
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