City Slickers – The Ultimate Dude Ranch Movie

Movies can be hit and miss. City Slickers was definitely a bit hit. In fact, most consider the ultimate dude ranch movie and it is one you might want to watch for a good laugh.

City Slickers was released in 1991. It starred Daniel Stern, Helen Slater, Jack Palance and Bruno Kirby. It regularly is listed in the top 100 funniest films of all time. Why? It was a classic mix of good actors going through midlife crisis who end up way out of their element on a dude ranch with the super machismo and somewhat nuts Jack Palance. You have to rent or buy it to get the full effect, but I will have a go at explaining it to you in my pitiful writing!


Billy Crystal plays Mitch. Mitch is having a midlife crisis as he comes up to his 39th birthday. He has two close friends who are also experiencing the same thing. One is under pressure to have kids. The other is in a bad marriage and having an affair. Despite this, they give Mitch a two week vacation with them going cattle rustling. As one would expect, he accepts and they all end up out in the southwest.

Then the laughs really start.



The boys spend some time learning the basics at a ranch. Then it is time to start the drive. There are a couple of professional cowboys, but they are drunk as skunks the entire time until Curly shows up. Curly is played by Jack Palance as a serious, no laugh type. He and Mitch don’t get along. This is a setup, of course, for sending them off to find cows on their own after Mitch inadvertently causes a stampeded. Curly and Mitch bond. They end up finding a pregnant cow and helping it give birth. The mother dies and Mitch adopts the baby. He names it Norman!

Telling you the rest of the movie would just ruin it, so I won’t. City slickers isn’t really about dude ranches or what really happens on them. That being said, you have to see it much like anyone who has traveled with their family has to see National Lampoon’s Family Vacation. If nothing else, it is a tremendous laugh.

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