2001 - TOWN AND COUNTRY, disappointing sex comedy

Somewhere in this rather disappointing and frequently silly sex comedy are some  decent ideas for a funny film.  Town and Country is the notorious film that cost $90 million dollars and only brought in $10.5 million dollars, obviously a financial disaster.  The film got terrible reviews although I suspect most of the reviews focused on the cost of the film and not the film itself.

Warren Beatty sort of plays a character modeled after himself, an aging Lothario still trying to bag every woman that he can.  In the film he's married to Diane Keaton.   Goldie Hawn and Gary Shandling are their best friends who are also having marital problems.  Shandling has decided he's gay after about 20 years of marriage. Andie MacDowell plays one of Beatty's attempted conquests who has a couple of bizarre parents played by "Moses" himself Charlton Heston as her father and a stage actor Marian Seldes as her mother.  These three are the funniest and most absurd characters in the film.

 

Had the screenplay maybe been thought through with a little more care,  it could have been an American version of Ophul's La Ronde but unfortunately it was not to be.  Beatty seems game to send up his image as the consummate Hollywood ladies man who is starting to age out of the role.  Gary Shandling, Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton are all seasoned professionals when it comes to comedy, but that old chestnut, the disappointing script let them down. I was rather surprised by this as besides being an actor Warren Beatty is an experienced producer/director and must have known that this film had serious problems.

 

As it is, there are laughs to be had for the most part.  However I hate to jump on the bandwagon but they really shouldn't have spent so much money on what could have been a decent comedy.  It you want to read about the production history of this film, it's all over the internet.

Written by Michael Laughlin and Buck Henry, the running time is 104 minutes.