not your ordinary cowboy movie

"I feel lost."

Mitch Robbins just turned 39 and he's miserable. This man who always sees the glass half-empty hates his job at the radio station. The growing discontent which he started to feel when he entered midlife escalates with every passing birthday. Factor in a stable yet stale relationship with his wife, alienation from his children, and it's no wonder he mouths the words that would describe the state of his life, "I feel lost."

And so he embarks on a fantasy vacation with his two best friends, hoping that it will shake off the dreariness of his existence. With Ed and Phil, Mitch signs up for a two-week stint as a cowboy. Their goal: Drive a herd of two hundred heads of cattle from New Mexico to Colorado. Not too easy for a man who couldn't throw a rope and whose first bovine encounter earned him several stitches on his backside. Yet remarkably, while teaching himself to sleep in a tent and eat cold beans, he learns more than what the adventure brochure promised.

The senior cowboy Curly offers Mitch if he'd like to know the secret of life.

"It's this," Curly says, holding up his pointing finger.

"The secret of life is your finger?" asks Mitch.

"It's one thing," the ragged elder replies. "The secret of life is pursuing one thing."

"So what is that one thing?" the younger persists.

"You have to go find it for yourself."

As expected, the movie drives the main character to find this "one thing," but not before he careens through unfortunate circumstances along the way. These were not put to waste, however, as Mitch and his friends discover more about themselves in two weeks of facing campfires and trudging uncertain trails than they did in their lifetime of friendship.

It was the last VCD copy of City Slickers (starring Billy Cystal) available at Astrovision. The decision to buy it, made on impulse yet its impact on me will outlast the five minutes I needed to make the purchase.

I watched the movie fifteen years too late but the timing's just right.