The Odd Couple

For some reason I always get a little nervous when an older comedy is put into the player. The reason is a vague worry that I won't be entertained by the dusty humor of a past century. However, I have no empirical basis for my prejudices; as in every genre, there are excellent representatives, some of which are over 100 years old (Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd) and basically everything by Billy Wilder is still watchable and funny today. Because the scripts and dialogues are excellently written, the timing and slapstick are perfectly acted. And then there are comedies that are not well made, have always been bad or have simply aged badly.Considering the fact that the script was written by Neil Simon and two excellent comedians, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, play the main roles, "The Odd Couple" has been rotting on my shelf for eight years for no reason. The film is actually quite a lot of fun. Dialogue, timing and the (for 1968) revolutionary questioning of gender roles ensure a good time. I particularly liked the emotional maturation process of the two, which takes place quite casually and without a raised finger and rounds off the story. I also didn't expect the entire first act of a light comedy to revolve around suicide.Jack Lemmon is and remains the MVP of so many comedies because he can act quirky and at the same time give his characters humanity and dramatic depth (see "The Apartment"). He is great at ping-pong with Matthau, but I could have done without the solo interludes with funny faces and noises. They are a bit cringe.

This is a fairly amusing comedy film from the 1960s. It is perhaps a bit un PC or stereotyped these days, in that it covers the risk of suicide from a guy who's marriage has just broken down but the awkward comedy did appeal to me never the less. The humour is pretty juvenile in nature but I didn't mind that too much. There's plenty of fast paced dialogue and some fairly memorable moments. The men are somewhat curmudgeonly and the ladies (well, some of them) somewhat 'dolly bird'-ish but I enjoyed the film and thought it was entertaining never the less. I wouldn't like to make fun of someone who was recently divorced but the comedy does come from other plot details - mainly the fact the 2 men have to share the same flat/apartment. The situations they find themselves in and how they defend their actions made me chuckle quite a bit. This isn't what I'd call a great film but its certainly good enough to be worth a watch - it has a bit of a farce type feel to it and I wasn't surprised its based on a play (by Neil Simon), as I did think it came across as a film that would be easy to stage as a play or theatrical production.