Susan Granger’s review of “TOWN AND COUNTRY” (New Line Cinema)
“I just made a huge mistake, but I promise this will never happen again,” vows Warren Beatty as Porter Stoddard, a successful New York architect who is going through a mid-life crisis. He’s committed adultery with a tattooed cellist (Nastassja Kinski) and his wife/business partner Ellie (Diane Keaton) is duly suspicious, which is not surprising since a) he’s obviously got a wandering eye and b) adultery broke up their best friends, Mona and Griffin (Goldie Hawn, Garry Shandling). While Porter’s pondering his options with Griffin in Sun Valley, he gets into more trouble, not only with the cellist but also a jet-setting heiress (Andie MacDowell) traveling her eccentric parents (Charlton Heston, Marian Seldes), and a free-spirited Idaho bait-shop owner (Jenna Elfman), plus the now-separated Mona. There’s also a subplot involving Shandling’s inability to admit he’s gay. From the very beginning, the making of this movie was a blueprint for disaster. Ineptly written in a wannabe Woody Allen style by Michael Laughlin and Buck Henry and broadly directed with a hysterical fervor by Peter Chelsom, it’s a feeble, slapstick sex comedy whose scenes are edited in a somewhat randomly episodic manner without the necessary connective tissue. (The disappearance of ten reels of film during the production process could explain this feeling of disjointedness.) The acting’s awful as painfully leaden laugh lines barely elicit a chuckle. And Charlton Heston’s self-mocking, gun-toting cameo is so over-the-top that it’s ludicrous. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Town and Country” is a thudding 2. It’s a tip-off that, after delaying the film’s release for two years, there was no premiere, reviewers were not allowed to see it until 48 hours before it opened and only Warren Beatty gave interviews.
