YMMV / City Slickers

• Awesome Music: Marc Shaiman's sweeping Western-style score.
• Ham and Cheese: Duke in II, Jack Palance relishes every single second he's on screen. Just look at his eyes when he talks about gooooooold.
• Nightmare Fuel: During a fight with the drunk cowhands, Phil holds a gun to one of their heads and threatens to kill him unless his partner throws his gun. Even then, he starts to spiral into a dark place where he sees the cowhand as an extension of his bully-some father-in-law and is highly tempted to shoot him. Thankfully he doesn't, but it's the darkest, most intense part of the movie.
  • Followed closely by the sequence where Mitch is swept away by the raging river while rescuing Norman. It's frighteningly realistic and Phil and Ed just barely manage to pull him to safety.
• One-Scene Wonder: The foul-mouthed windbag who charms the elementary school class on career day makes the most of his brief screen time.
• Retroactive Recognition: Jake Gyllenhaal appears as Mitch's son (in his film debut).
• Sequelitis: While it certainly has some good moments, City Slickers II is not held in high regard by critics and audiences and was even nominated for a Razzie for Worst Sequel.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Ed describes the best day of his life as the day he kicked his abusive father out of his family. He also says it was the worst day of his life because he never saw his father again.
  • Phil breaking down over the dissolution of his marriage. Not to mention the implication that he was about to kill himself before Mitch and Ed came in. Even sadder is that the marriage was utterly miserable, yet Phil's demeanor makes it clear that he's still sad about it breaking up, rather than relieved.
  • It's an abrupt, sad moment when Cool Old Guy Curly dies in his sleep.
  • Although he's fortunately rescued by Mitch, the scene where Norman is swept away by the river is wrenching, not helped by his frantic, frightened bleating. Just imagine if Mitch hadn't heard him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Siskel and Ebert said the sequel should have been about Jack Palance's character in the big city in a reversal of the situation from the first film.
• Values Dissonance: Phil sleeping with one of his employees is supposed to be a sign of how miserable he is with his marriage. But since the Me Too movement, his possible impregnation of a barely legal subordinate is now considered to be grossly unethical.

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