Review: Town & Country

Warren Beatty is an architect married to fashion designer Diane Keaton, with two grown kids (Josh Hartnett and Tricia Vessey) who frankly don’t need him anymore. The film follows Beatty as romantic/sexual liaisons with other women just seem to magically happen to him. Meanwhile, his long-time friend Goldie Hawn is suspicious that her husband Garry Shandling (whom Beatty is also close with) is having an affair. She’s right, but boy is that not even the half of it. Beatty’s romantic/sexual conquests include sexy cellist Nastassja Kinski, and goofy heiress Andie MacDowell who is just as eccentric as her foul-mouthed parents (Marian Seldes and Charlton Heston. Yes, Charlton Heston. An armed Charlton Heston, even). Jenna Elfman turns up as the owner of a fishing supplies store whom Beatty and Shandling meet whilst on a male bonding trip.

 

One of the biggest box-office flops of all-time, this mixture of romantic comedy and farce from director Peter Chelsom (“Funny Bones”, “The Mighty”, “Hannah Montana: The Movie”) is clearly a misfire. Released in 2001 but mostly filmed years earlier (1998, which might explain why former ‘somebody’ Jenna Elfman is featured prominently), it’s definitely a failure and a complete waste of its talented cast. He’s an excellent awards show host, but you know you’re watching a bad comedy when Garry Shandling turns up. “Mixed Nuts”, anyone?

 

Personally, I knew I wasn’t gonna have a good time with this one early on when we see an old lady get ‘comically’ bowled over by two giant dogs. I’m not a huge fan of farce at the best of times, but boy is the timing way off in this one. Part romantic comedy, part screwball farce, this is a bit like Woody Allen’s mediocre “Everyone Says I Love You” without actors singing badly, and a little “First Wives Club” thrown into the mix. Hell, Goldie Hawn’s in all three films, which doesn’t help shake the feeling. Chelsom and writers Buck Henry (yes, that Buck Henry) and Michael Laughlin botch things from the get-go by showing us a scene from later on in the opening, letting us know that happily married Warren Beatty will cheat on his wife Diane Keaton with Nastassja Kinski (Kinski, by the way, is surely way too old for her ‘younger woman’ role). I don’t often like films starting with scenes out of context, but here it’s particularly stupid and suicidal. So although it was probably meant to be cute that renowned pants man Warren Beatty was playing a committed married man, the gag casting is immediately killed. Besides, Beatty has been happily married to Annette Bening for years, so even if the joke weren’t ruined, it’s not as funny as it would’ve been pre-Annette Bening.

 

To be honest, I’ve never gotten Warren Beatty. Yes, I love “Bonnie and Clyde”, but otherwise I find him a wooden, smug bore of an actor. That’s ever the case here, believe me. He’s a block of wood, if not an entire forest of trees. He also spends the entire film with an expression on his face that suggests there have been far too many rewrites for him to keep track of, and now he has no fucking idea what his lines are. He looks constantly befuddled and surprised, and it is not to any good effect whatsoever. Either that or he’s drifting in and out of consciousness at times, it seems.

 

Keaton and Hawn are pretty likeable (Hawn looks terrific) and Shandling is well-cast, but the material just isn’t here, no one seems to know what kind of film they are making, and the director is completely tone-deaf. How did no one see the problem with Beatty being introduced to Andie MacDowell before we even get to find out how he ended up screwing around with Kinski? It’s a mistake because the scene obviously tells us Beatty and MacDowell will get together at some point, so why should we even care about how he ended up in bed with Kinski? There’s a really stupid bit of farce when a spilt drink leads to Keaton and Hawn in a restaurant bathroom with all of the other women Beatty has slept with turning up. It’s appallingly done, but even worse, nothing happens. At all. It’s a lumpy, messy film (Look at my plot synopsis. Does that seem coherent and cohesive to you? For once, it’s not my lazy-arse writing, either), much as the majority of the cast try their best. Shandling probably fares best, but there’s not much for the taking here. Andie MacDowell, meanwhile, gives her most embarrassing performance since “Greystoke”. She’s terribly ‘off’ here. Although he has one or two very unfortunate moments (which I think everyone focuses on way too much in reviews), the late Charlton Heston at least gets to let his hair down here for a change. The very serious-minded actor rarely got a chance to play comedy, as far as I can recall and he’s better at it than you might expect. Jenna Elfman, whose particular comic talents (making goofy, squinty faces?) has always eluded me, brings a little too much whimsy and randomness to a film that is already all over the damn shop. I mean, this is a film that has Beatty dressed as a polar bear and Shandling as Elvis at one point. Why? Who knows. I’m still trying to work out why Holland Taylor has a nondescript walk-on as an awards presenter. What the hell?

 

This is a bad film, very clearly. You can tell it was a troubled production, as apparently there was much rewriting, re-shooting, re-casting, and so on. To be honest though, it’s not nearly interesting enough to warrant its extraordinarily bad reputation. In that sense, it kinda reminds me of another Warren Beatty flop, 1987’s infamous “Ishtar”, which was frankly too damn boring to write about. This one sucks, it doesn’t work, and that’s that. Let’s move on, shall we? Don’t watch this, unless your goal in life was to hear Diane Keaton say ‘cock’ and ‘pussy’.

 

Rating: D+