Town & Country (2001) New Line/Comedy RT: 104 minutes Rated R (sexuality and language) Director: Peter Chelsom Screenplay: Michael Laughlin and Buck Henry Music: Rolfe Kent Cinematography: William A. Fraker Release date: April 27, 2001 (US) Cast: Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Garry Shandling, Andie MacDowell, Nastassja Kinski, Jenna Elfman, Charlton Heston, Marian Seldes, Josh Hartnett, Tricia Vessey, Azura Skye, Holland Taylor. Box Office: $6.7M (US)/$10.3M (World)
Rating: *
Town & Country holds the distinction of being one of the biggest box office flops EVER! I could see it coming from a mile away. All the sure signs of a money-losing megaflop were right there. The inflated production cost ($90 million?!), the production delays, the many re-writes and re-shoots, the ever-changing release dates (12 times!) and no pre-release screenings. What more do you need, a big flashing neon sign?
It struck me funny that more people showed up to see One Night at McCool’s that Saturday night at the multiplex. I saw both movies that same night and it looked like people were more interested in a little movie starring Matt Dillon (Drugstore Cowboy), Paul Reiser (Mad About You) and Liv Tyler (Stealing Beauty) than a big movie starring three Oscar winners like Warren Beatty (Reds), Diane Keaton (Annie Hall) and Goldie Hawn (Cactus Flower). It’s just as well because Town & Country is a terrible picture. It’s a perfect illustration of Murphy’s Law as everything that could have possibly gone wrong did go wrong. Horribly wrong! It’s bad on the level of Ishtar (another Beatty movie!). It’s so jaw-droppingly bad that it’s actually kind of interesting. Much like 1994’s North, it’s interesting in the way a horrible train wreck is interesting. You know you shouldn’t look, but you just can’t take your eyes away.
Town & Country stars Beatty as Porter Stoddard, a famous New York architect who has an affair with a beautiful cellist (Kinski, Cat People). He feels horribly guilty about it and debates whether or not to tell his wife of 25 years Ellie (Keaton). It doesn’t help matters any that their best friends Mona (Hawn) and Griffin (Shandling, What Planet Are You From?) are getting divorced after she finds out that he’s been cheating on her.
Things go from bad to worse after Porter has a sexual encounter with Mona. Ellie finds out about her husband’s affair with the cellist and throws him out of the apartment. Porter fools around with other women including hardware store clerk Auburn (Elfman, Dharma & Greg) and wealthy head case Eugenie (MacDowell, sex, lies and videotape). The climactic scene takes place at an awards dinner for interior decorator Ellie. All of the principal characters show up and it’s supposed to be hilarious. It’s not!
In fact, nothing even remotely amusing happens in this movie. The worst part of Town & Country has to be the sequence where Porter meets Eugenie’s equally crazy family. Her father (Heston, True Lies) is a homophobic gun nut and her mother (Seldes, Home Alone 3) rides around in a wheelchair making inappropriate sexual remarks. At one point, he walks right into his daughter’s bedroom while she’s in bed with Porter. Forget that they’re just playing with her stuffed animal collection; there’s something very wrong about this. This whole sequence is more disturbing than it is funny. It’s compounded by the obvious fact that Heston’s health was starting to fail while he shot this movie. It’s as bad as Richard Pryor’s performance in 1991’s Another You. I can’t laugh at somebody who’s dying right in front of me.
A lot of Town & Country barely makes any sense. For example, don’t you think that Ellie would find out at some point that Porter also slept with Mona? She doesn’t. The subject of Griffin’s homosexuality comes up now and then, but wouldn’t it have made more sense to come right out and admit his sexual orientation rather than let everybody think that he slept with another woman? The way it’s handled here might make sense in 1975, but it doesn’t in 2001. There’s a scene at a costume party that doesn’t have any kind of a payoff although I can’t really imagine what the writers could do with the idea of Warren Beatty wearing a bear costume. More accurately, I can’t imagine anything that would make sense in this so-called adult comedy.
Town & Country is supposed to be a throwback to the kinds of adult-oriented comedies that used to come out in the 70s. It deals with adultery and that’s where part of the problem lies. Thanks to the trashy subject matter of TV shows like Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, adultery doesn’t seem like that big of a deal anymore. By comparison, it’s the least of all evils concerning marriage and sex. In short, it’s a boring and outdated concept for a comedy. It’s definitely NOT a $90 million idea. Nevertheless, the producers went ahead and made the movie. I guess they figured with all the big stars attached to the project, it might actually turn a profit. Oh, how wrong they were!
All of the actors turn in embarrassing performances except for Keaton. She might as well have phoned in her performance for all the life she puts into it. Sadly, Heston turns in the absolute worst performance of the bunch. It would also turn out to be one of his final film roles. The actors don’t even appear to have any chemistry between them. I find this very curious since the three leads have all worked together before. Beatty and Keaton starred in Reds (1981). Beatty and Hawn appeared in Shampoo (1975) together. Keaton and Hawn were co-stars in The First Wives Club (1996).
I have an idea of where the $90 million went and it wasn’t just into the actors’ bank accounts. Town & Country takes place in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Sun Valley, Idaho. The Stoddards have a gorgeous apartment in Manhattan and a beautiful country house in the Hamptons. Griffin has a nice cabin in Sun Valley. He and Porter visit a luxurious ski resort. Eugenie’s family lives in a mansion in Sun Valley. Do you see where I’m going with all of this? The movie is all about real estate. Take away the actors and you have several nice photo spreads for Town & Country magazine. It must have cost a fortune to shoot in all of these places.
This is also the nicest thing that I can say about Town & Country. It’s one of the clumsiest, clunkiest attempts at comedy that I’ve ever seen. For one thing, isn’t Beatty too old for this kind of role? He displays the kind of reckless behavior one would expect from somebody having a mid-life crisis. The idea of a 64YO man playing a reluctant Casanova represents some of the most grievous miscasting that I’ve seen since Stockard Channing played a high school senior in Grease. I don’t even think that Blake Edwards could have salvaged this movie. I can’t blame this entire mess on director Peter Chelsom (Hear My Song, Serendipity); I’m sure he didn’t have too much control over the proceedings given the involvement of notorious control freak Beatty. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but I’m not going to sit and point fingers. I’m simply going to say that this movie is an out-of-control mess. You’re better off just cancelling your subscription.
