You have to wonder what combination of roofies and blackmail
New Line's former kingpin Michael DeLuca used to lure Warren
Beatty into this grotesque travesty of a Philip Barry comedy. TOWN
& COUNTRY is one of those rare movies that preoccupy you for
their entire running time with questions bearing in no way on the
story onscreen. Questions like: How did this get greenlit? Why
would someone send a comedy into production with no script?
Why would someone let a comedy finish production with no script?
Did these very gifted people (there are good, hard-working, clean
and industrious performances from Beatty, Diane Keaton, Goldie
Hawn, Jenna Elfman and Nastassja Kinski) think this was funny
when they read it? When they were shooting it? Did the crew just
kind of stand there in stony silence?
Considering the combined ages of the cast, and the movie's
splashy failure in an era where teen mediocrities rule the earth,
and the movie's damage to the career of its director, Peter
Chelsom, a talented man who's not to blame, the whole thing
provokes, not bitchy snickers, but a sigh of profound sadness.
