Town & Country (2001)

Undescribable Perfection

Simply A Masterpiece

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

There's a feeling throughout that someone must have been literally crazy to think this was any good. Everyone in it is either stilted, phony, or both. It gives new meaning to the word "strained." NONE of the jokes work, they all just go "KOONK." It's overflowing with stupid, nonsensical subplots. Did they decide at some point - say, around the $70 million mark - to just throw up their hands, start goofing around, and make it deliberately bad? I don't get it. Something this utterly confounding could be a WTF double feature with WAR, INC.

Incredibly bad comedy. Happily married couple Porter (Warren Beatty) and Ellie (Diane Keaton) are shocked to find out that a friend of theirs called Griffin (Garry Shandling!) is cheating on his wife (Goldie Hawn). This gets Porter to start thinking about cheating on HIS wife with a beautiful musician (Nastassia Kinski).Abysmal. This movie took three YEARS to make before it was even released. It was plagued by infighting, re shoots, rewrites and clashing star egos. Beatty has gotten most of the blame for trying to control everything. All of this fighting shows up on the screen unfortunately. The script lurches all over the place veering wildly from scene to scene. Sometimes it tries to play like a sophisticated comedy--other times it plays slapstick so broad that the Three Stooges would be embarrassed (was putting Beatty in a polar bear costume supposed to be funny?). None of the jokes are funny--not one! I didn't even smile once let alone laugh. Also we have some talented actors like Jenna Elfman and Andie MacDowell doing some of the worst comedic bits I've ever seen. I'm still waiting to find out how MacDowell and her dolls were supposed to be funny. Then we have Josh Harnett (billed here as "Joshua") giving another bad performance and Charlton Heston completely humiliating himself.This gets a 2 because most of the cast really tries. Shandling is bad but Keaton and Hawn are just great and Beatty is somewhat amusing (seeing him doing comedy is--interesting). Also Kinski is just great in her small role. For them I give this a 2 but this seriously can be safely skipped. ALMOST worth seeing to see how bad a comedy can truly be.

I remembered seeing the advertisement for this movie at my local theater when it came out. But I was unaware of the nightmare it was to film it & release it; all I did know was that it was in & out of the theater faster than COOL AS ICE. I had no idea this movie even existed until I read James Robert Parish's book FIASCO, which has a chapter on the making of TOWN & COUNTRY...and which, rest assured, is more funny & believable than what shows up on the screen.After searching relatively high & low to find this movie (it was released on DVD, but logically, stores do not exactly keep a copy on hand), I watched it knowing about its history & that chances are, I would likely want to throw things at the screen. I am glad to say I made it through the first viewing alive, but will start by saying that no, this movie is not a winner in the slightest. Yet is it an all-around creative bomb? Not so fast.Starting to film without a complete script was the oldest mistake in the book & they made it. Yet while it may have been a patchwork effort without much rhyme or reason, some lines were funny & rather inspired (most of them coming from Garry Shandling, who almost walks away with the movie, such as it is). Maybe having mature, veteran actors mouth some of the more scatological dialogue (as if this was supposed to be a senior's version of American PIE) was not wise, but that is often funny to watch in itself. Diane Keaton's line near the end, "Is there any women in this room you haven't slept with?", could easily be what audiences have been wondering for years. The only thing the script missed was continuity & structure, and all that showed on the screen, resulting in a film that looked & acted choppy, with many characters played by big names being reduced to glorified cameos, making you wonder if there is a lot left on the cutting room floor (but we cannot blame the editor for all that, seeing as how they did not have much to work with). The producers should have been well aware that working with Warren Beatty, a famously noncommittal perfectionist, was not going to be clear sailing. Part of (if not all) the script problems can be laid at his door, since he kept insisting on changes to the dialogue, taking up time & (most obviously) money. And of course, Warren was in his early 60s when he made this movie, playing the same old Casanova he always did. Audiences, most especially the young people who make up a large part of who goes to the movies, are not going to buy that anymore, or are unwilling to try. The studio should have saw this in the beginning & realized the chances of a box office success were slim to none, and thus rein in the budget before it went haywire.After reading Parish's book & seeing just how things went bad with TOWN & COUNTRY, I rather think a movie about the making of a movie like TOWN & COUNTRY would have been better (and with all the same actors). What went on behind the scenes was funny & screwball in itself, and most of all, it was not even scripted at all. There was potential for a movie like TOWN & COUNTRY, but if a script had been agreed on before the cameras started rolling, then the financial fallout would not have been so large. As it remains now, it is one of the biggest box-office duds in Hollywood history, and the chances of it ever turning a profit are almost nonexistent (just think about inflation).Final thoughts: For what it was worth, the actors gave it their best shot with this movie, never once placing tongue firmly in cheek with their parts (though, by all accounts, that would have improved things). I am not sure if anyone of them knew they were making something special.A good portion of the script was actually funny, but whenever it tried to get serious & make some kind of statement about infidelity & morality, it went downhill from there. Even the much-bandied-about ending is so artificial & predictable, you can see it coming from a mile away. More of a cop-out & a feeling of "Let's just finish this thing already!" Most of the people involved in making this movie have survived professionally, but only time will tell how Warren Beatty fares (that is, if he makes another movie again). Hopefully, the TOWN & COUNTRY incident awoke him to the fact he needs to finally revise (or abandon altogether) his stock character if he ever wants to work regularly & be taken seriously again.

"Town & Country" is a comedy that is neither amusing nor funny. With more than its share of ineptly written dialog and clumsily staged scenes, it is atrocious. "Town & Country" is suppose to be a humorous look at the upper middle class and the sexual misadventures of two "happily" married couples. There are too many superfluous scenes that should have been edited out of the movie because they go nowhere. Then there are the sequences in which one immediately knows what will happen, but seem to be interminably stretched out as aggravating time filler. If Warren Beatty wanted to look like a nincompoop, he has succeeded. "Town & Country" feels like a retread of past comedies, but very poorly imitated. As the jilted spouses, Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn come off fine. Andie MacDowell's character manages to pad at least another twenty minutes to the film. She displays the amazing eyesight of an eagle because, while riding in a ski lift, she can spot Warren Beatty's character from at least thirty feet away when he is dressed as a fly fisherman with a floppy hat covering all of his hair and obscuring his face, reminiscent of Jack Lemmon in "Grumpy Old Men." Nastassja Kinski, as a cellist having an affair with Beatty, received sixth billing and more than holds her own and is one of the few bright spots of this film. The opening scene has Warren Beatty watching her play the cello with her completely naked. He simultaneously confesses in a voice over that he is not interested in classical music and that he is making a mistake. The initial shot of Nastassja is from behind her in which we see two musical clefts symmetrically painted onto her naked back - except that this is a credited cello body double. The closing credits list the actors in order of appearance so that Nastassja Kinski is listed second after Warren Beatty - very clever on her part."Town & Country" was a box office dud that can best be appreciated if one is drunk.