moonspinner55 Review of The Odd Couple

The Odd Couple (1968)

"Who would send a suicidal telegram?" ... "Felix the Nut, that's who!"

[5/10 · 14 October 2007]

In what must have been the biggest redundancy of the year, Neil Simon actually got an Academy Award nomination for adapting his Tony winning 1965 play "The Odd Couple" to the screen--redundant since the film seems to have preserved Simon's stage text word-for-word, with the pauses for theatrical effect kept intact. In their second screen-teaming after 1966's "The Fortune Cookie", Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon are equally good here, and often times very funny, but the material is crassly labored, with Simon over-emphasizing every irritating quirk (Matthau's sports writer is not just sloppy, he tracks in dirt and likes it that way; Lemmon's divorced hypochondriac isn't just natty, he's a walking phobia). Slim comedic story about two bachelors in New York City attempting to live together (in a humongous eight-room apartment with a view) has set-ups that constantly remind one this is just a loud transfer from its source. The jokes aren't varied, they're all in the same pushy vein, and Simon thinks hollering is funny; he uses yelling as the capper to every volley, every barrage of put-downs. ** from ****