The Out-of-Towners

Goldie Hawn and Steve Martin are such likable performers that it's not much fun to bash their projects. But Sam Weisman's remake of Arthur Hiller's 1970 Jack Lemmon/Sandy Dennis adaptation of the Neil Simon play offers some groan-inducing high jinks. Martin and Hawn play an Ohio couple, Henry and Nancy Clark, with marital troubles that erupt when their youngest child (Hawn's real-life son, Oliver Hudson) leaves for college. When Henry gets a job interview in New York (he's been fired from his old firm, but he hasn't told Nancy), everything goes wrong. Once in the big city, after considerable travel trauma, the kooky couple are chased by a dog, mugged, kicked out of a hotel, and arrested. Most of the shtick -- like Henry yelling into the baggage-claim flap and Nancy constantly fluttering around in high heels -- comes off as forced zaniness. A few items score, as when a mugger posing as Andrew Lloyd Webber meets the couple on the city streets and Nancy gets misty thinking about Cats. "We lost a cat that year," Henry explains. Hawn and Martin have fun together, but it's not enough to save a drippy storyline and corny slapstick. This version of The Out-of-Towners should stick to the boonies.

-- Rachel O'Malley