R E V I E W S
Town & Country (2001)
Starring: Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Andie MacDowell, Garry
Shandling Studio: New Line Cinema Review Posted: 5.8.01 Rating: 2/4
By Sara M. Fetters.
Despite
what you may have heard, the long delayed (and reported $90
million) Town & Country is not the train wreck it has
been made out to be. It
is also nowhere near the sublime slapstick masterpiece it so
desperately wants to be, either.
What the film ultimately comes to be is a hodge-podge of
great comedic ideas strung together by the thinnest threads of
plot and circumstance, undone by lack of focus and scattershot
characters.
Warren
Beatty and Diane Keaton are Porter and Ellie Stodard, an
affluent New York couple who think nothing of flying off to
Paris to celebrate friend Griffin’s (Garry Shandling) birthday
along with his wife Mona (Goldie Hawn). Left at home are the duos two children (which include a Pearl
Harbor’s Josh Hartnett) and housekeeper, as well as the family
dogs. But what appears to
be an idyllic existence quickly erodes into a flurry of lies,
sex and mixed-messages.
The
basic concept is as old as theater and cinema itself – marital
infidelity amongst the rich. Oscar
Wilde, Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder got more
comedic mileage out of this conceit then Bill and Monica.
Some of the greatest plays and films of all time came
from their fertile minds; An Ideal Husband, The Lady
Eve, Bringing Up Baby, The Apartment; to say
that Town & Country does not reach those comedic
heights is not so much a condemnation as it is an honest truth.
Don’t
get me wrong - the film is funny, especially during its first
two thirds as Porter’s world crumbles around him.
Even when he attempts an escape to a wintry Idaho
wilderness with the equally doghouse-exiled Griffin, the film
maintains an irreverent frivolity that makes even the most
absurd events seem commonplace. But
there is a constantly prevalent feeling throughout this whole
endeavor that Town & Country’s three-plus year
gestation has taken its toll.
About the time that Jenna Elfman, dressed as Marilyn
Monroe, and Beatty, clad in a polar bear suit, start cavorting
in the snow like two pubescent cubs you know things are starting
to drift out of control. And
when Charlton Heston arrives during the film’s climax back in
New York shooting a shotgun and spouting profanity, it's gone
from being out of control to nearly offensive.
There is no consistency in tone or direction (evidence of the film’s re-shoots and re-writes) and the female characters are all shrill, lunatics or simply emotionally penurious. The men don’t come off any better, but Beatty is so self-effacing and smooth in his role that his character’s shortcomings are a bit easier to accept. All in all, Town & Country isn’t so much a disaster as it is a missed comedic opportunity.
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