City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold (1994)

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Billy Crystal, Jack Palance, Daniel Stern, Jon Lovitz, Patricia Wettig and Noble Willingham star in this 1994 comedy sequel. This takes place a year after the first film where Mitch (Crystal) is now living in the country near New York and is radio station manager. He starts having bad dreams about late cowboy, Curly (Palance) and thinks he's alive. His friend, Phil (Stern) is now divorced and his brother, Glen (Lovitz) is looking for a handout. While Mitch celebrates his 40th birthday, he finds a treasure map inside Curly's hat. Mitch talks with Phil and they decide to hunt for the treasure that Curly kept secret. Glen joins them and they get into mishaps. Soon, they meet Curly's twin brother, Duke (Palance) who helps them. Wettig returns as Mitch's wife, Barbara and Willingham returns as Clay Stone. This is a good sequel with a good cast I recommend.

Every so often you get a sequel to a really good movie that is even better than the original; sadly this is not one of them.The gags are more crude than subtle, and stretched till all the stupid people get them, to the point of discomfort, and redoing the VCR gag that was great first time round was a crime against comedy.I loved the first film and after waiting 15 years to catch CS2 I have to say I was disappointed. The start is slow and bogged down by domestic issues that did not contribute to the plot in any meaningful fashion.CS1 was uplifting, CS2 is a predictable repeat and subtracts from your fondness for the characters as they discover greed.Thankfully Jack Palance lived on to make a few more films after this for us to remember him by, may he rest in peace.

Utter contrivance is the only way to describe this complete rehash of the 1991 smash hit comedy "City Slickers". Again we have three lost, middle aged men searching the wild west for treasure, again accompanied by craggy faced, stony hearted Jack Palance, back from the dead, as it were. Not only is the basic plot structure the same, but all the clever comic moments from the first film are carefully milked again here.Crystal appears to be doing an old routine that looks very tired from early on. Support form comics Daniel Stern and Jon Lovitz (whose character is a waste of space) is uninspired, and it's left to the ever enjoyable Jack Palance to rescue the sinking ship, which he really isn't quite able to do.Writers Billy Crystal, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel are never able to capture any of the hilarious moments that made the '91 flick so successful, yet they did commit the same error that the original movie's writers Ganz and Mandel did in the first, letting proceedings get clumsily sloppy at the close.Scene after scene is so obviously contrived that it is impossible to let go and enjoy the film. Even one fantastic piece of eye catching cinematography is clearly a set up. What can you do?Monday, June 10, 1996 - Video

While i would agree the beginning reason for their quest was motivated by greed, at the end, they realize that it was the adventure that had changed their perceptions of each other and their characters, Glen stepped in front of a bullet for his bro and finally accomplished what he set out to do, something he hasn't ever done. Phil jumped a guy at least twice, and had found himself and his own life, with out having to define it by his ex wife. Duke turned honest and gained Integrity. Mitch gained courage, i mean he was gonna suck on Phil's ass.;) He learned to trust his brother. In the end, they found a treasure greater then gold. Then they get the gold so they Win twice :D