Product Details

• Actors: Steve Martin, Goldie Hawn, John Cleese, Mark McKinney, Oliver Hudson
• Directors: Sam Weisman
• Format: PAL
• Language: German (Dolby Digital 5.1), Hungarian (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: German, English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Danish, Finnish, Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Turkish
• Region: Region 2 (Read more about DVD formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005QIXY
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #256,183 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The Out-of-Towners [Region 2]" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This remake of Neil Simon's 1970 comedy finds Goldie Hawn and Steve Martin as Ohio yokels cast adrift in Rudy Giuliani's sanitized New York City. With their son recently departed for Britain, the empty-nesters travel to the Big Apple for a job interview and are beset with all kinds of bad luck, starting with their flight being rerouted to Boston. Things only go downhill from there, of course, as they're mugged by an Andrew Lloyd Webber imposter, the high-tech multilingual navigation system on their rented Cadillac goes haywire, and their hotel reservations fall through. Though this movie is marred by some out-of-place slapstick and mawkish romance scenes, it's not without its funny moments. The couple stumbles into a sexual-addiction encounter group and has to try to back out gracefully (not succeeding very well, of course). John Cleese is howlingly funny as he reprises his Fawlty Towers role of a cross-dressing hotelier, and Martin has a great drug-delirium scene, in which he's slipped a hit of LSD in jail (thinking it's aspirin). Just try not to think in terms of comparisons to Neil Simon's original and this remake works fairly well. --Jerry Renshaw

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars STICK TO THE ORIGINAL., February 28, 2004

By	Shashank Tripathi (Gadabout) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (VINE VOICE)

This review is from: The Out-Of-Towners (DVD)

Anyone who has seen the original 1970 version with Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis, under the aegis of Neil Simon's tight scriptwriting, knows how an excellent cast, script, and director can put together a comedy masterpiece.

By the same token, it's easy to see how the opposite of that can create another insipid Hollywood bore-a-thon! Despite two stars in the lead that I simply adore, it falls miserably on its head. There are about 2-3 actual gags that evoke so much as a grin, and out of a full length movie that just isn't enough.

While I highly recommend the original, you'd probably be better off skipping this wannabe farce.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Buy the original, this is terrible., July 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Out-Of-Towners (DVD)

The original starring Jack Lemmon is a truly brilliant film. I was ashamed for Steve Martin at this poor attempt.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars You know you're in trouble when..., September 15, 2001

By	Bobby Brady "Radioman970" (Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Out of Towners [VHS] (VHS Tape)

...you're watching a movie with 3 heavyweights (Martin, Hawn and Cleese) and you laugh 3 times. The problem with this remake of the Lemmon-Dennis classic is that we've seen it all before done much better. See "National Lampoon's Vacation", "Dutch", "Fandango" and Martin's own "Planes, Trains and Automobiles". Any one of these "travelling comedy of errors" is considerably more humorous. When the original came out it was something new. It had Jack Lemmon going over the top and really getting the most out of every scene in the film. Lemmon screaming at the top of his lungs-taking down everybody's address, dealing with the cab driver, the dark stranger in Central Park, the fight with the dog over the Cracker Jacks, the chipped tooth, Murray the hotel locator, rain and garbage all over the streets, broken heal and just so much more. Steve Martin's version of George Kellerman is lazy and nearly humorless. It loses sight of the original's comic storyline: New York kicking this simple Ohio couple's butt at every turn and the couple deciding to go back home. It does have Cleese as a closet transvestite (perhaps the films only funny moments). Check out the original or one of the other films mentioned here. This just isn't worth the time.