 The Odd Couple II (1998) Since no one else under 58 will ever see this movie, I will now give away the entire story. Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau) lives in a retirement complex. His son (Jonathon Silverman) calls, interrupting Oscar's daily poker game to announce that he's getting married in a week. But hold on to your Princess Cruises sun visor, his fiancée is none other than the daughter of old-time best friend/worst enemy Felix Unger (Jack Lemmon), whom Oscar hasn't seen in 17 years. Several awkward scenes later, Felix and Oscar have rented a car together and are driving from the airport to San something-or-other. Neither can remember and they are immediately lost in the California desert. Felix still makes those funny noises in restaurants and Oscar still smokes cigars. Some stuff happens where they're arrested a couple of times, the local sheriff gets all angry at them for getting into trouble THREE TIMES IN A ROW, and since they have also lost their clothes when the rental car exploded, as often happens in real life, they traipse around the motel room in glow in the dark Wal-Mart boxers. There's a painfully extended sequence in a bar with Christine Baranski playing a small-town hussy who comes on to Oscar while her girlfriend flirts with Felix, which eventually gets the boys into trouble with their angry redneck husbands. Finally, the sheriff buys them plane tickets and they get there in time to stop Jonathon Silverman from worrying about the wedding (he signifies this by placing his hand on his brow and shaking his head). After the wedding, Felix heads off to romance some foxy retired chick, but he winds up at Oscar's doorstep with no place to live, so the end of the movie is Oscar letting him move in to his dingy and depressing and doubtless smelly apartment. All of which is to demonstrate that not only was this film a crushing bore to sit through, with none of the wit of the original, but also that Neil Simon must be going senile, because an eight year-old could come up with a more engaging piece of cinema. Or perhaps it's a generational thing, since everyone else in the theater seemed to enjoy it, and I noticed several people waiting to watch the end credits. An alternate theory is that they had to wait for the lights to come on in order to safely exit, and I'm not being sarcastic. There were a lot of "we're supposed to believe that …" situations in The Odd Couple II. We're supposed to believe that by some twisted miracle the children of these two friends/foes somehow met and fell in love. We're supposed to believe that simply by pounding on the hood of a car you will cause it to roll down a hill and burst into flames. That anal-retentive Felix wouldn't have memorized the directions, or at least the name of the town they're headed to. That Christine Baranski, whose heavenly middle-aged gams were perfectly accented with short shorts, would find the droopy-eyed, fat-lipped, sour-milk-smelling, hairy-eared monstrosity of Walter Matthau even remotely attractive, if not screamingly repulsive. That Felix would dump a foxy lady because she leaves her clothes lying around and then move in with the biggest slob in America. Admittedly, there is a certain allure to the endless re-teaming of these Borscht-belt cronies. You are guaranteed a couple of good put-downs as well as the monkey-faced antics of Walter Matthau. Grumpy Old Men, for instance, was surprisingly entertaining, thanks in no small part to the chemistry of the leads. However, The Odd Couple II demonstrates that the writing on Grumpy Old Men was superior in every way. Grumpy Old Men, for your information, was written by Mark Steven Johnson, a first-time screenwriter whose credits now include Grumpier Old Men and Big Bully, which says a lot about the decline of Neil Simon. However, there is a possibility that this is in fact the most subversive and powerful comedy of all time. You see, Felix Unger is clearly so screamingly, flamboyantly homosexual I half expected the boys to hitch a ride on Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. If this was intentional, then Neil Simon is a god. If true, the following scenes take on a whole new meaning: Felix waking Oscar up in the middle of the night (supposedly because he's forgotten where he is); Felix resenting Oscar's freedom; Felix giving Oscar a final hug so long and ardent that Oscar has to pry his fingers off one by one; Felix unable to talk to or maintain a relationship with a woman; Felix finally returning to Oscar and immediately serving Oscar's poker buddies fresh sandwiches. If this was unintentional, and I suspect it was, then I was so bored while watching Odd Couple II that I had to come up with something, anything, to keep my mind off the geriatric nonsense in front of me. The saddest thing about The Odd Couple II is what it could have been. Imagine starting the film with Felix, destitute and alone, appearing at Oscar's doorstep with no place else to go. You have drama and comedy inherent in this setup, and you could actually care about the characters. Instead, Simon opts for the lowest, most pointless sit-comedy, complete with fake emotions and quick resolutions. Worst of all, after years of comedic brilliance on the TV series, he neglected to thank Jack Klugman and Tony Randall with a much-desired cameo. The whole thing stinks like the lobby of a nursing home.
Review by Crimedog |