Review of The Odd Couple (1968) by Dave R — 18 Nov 2010

The Odd Couple is the classic throwaway example people use when talking about plays and movies certain people go see as opposed to those who go to see Waiting for Godot, as if the latter is too heavy and inaccessible for those who enjoy the former, and the former is too lighthearted and silly for those who seek the latter. Judging by my own tastes and proclivities, I would probably be compartmentalized into the latter's group, because I love risky, challenging, "arty" stuff, but who's to say there's no thematic juice to be squeezed out of Neil Simon's abiding farce? Can't it be viewed as the timeless "bromance" that Judd Apatow, Simon Pegg and Seth Rogen have brought back this past decade in the form of audience-friendly, wide-appeal "guy comedies"? it belongs in that class of films, which in their own way, despite any low-brow sensibility they may or may not attract, have a direct effect on the audience, a snappy, endlessly endearing coverage of the softies beneath the machismo. It's not more thoughtful and provocative than existential angst and philosophical musing; it just happens to be more accessible.

Shuffling around on feet that seemingly ought to be webbed, Oscar Madison is the slackest, anti-classic leading man in history. In midsummer, Christmas stockings even now dangle over his fireplace, and his refrigerator is cleaned so infrequently that he has milk standing up in there exclusive of the bottle. And still, as played by Walter Matthau, he's the better half of The Odd Couple, because he is laugh-out-loud funny in a way that many real men like him are: It's not so much that they have sharp tongues as that they just look and sound funny, they're crass, derogatory, and carry that persona all but unconsciously. Matthau is an extraordinary comic actor for that very reason, because the most deceptively difficult thing for a comedian to do is to translate how they're funny in personal situations into performance material.

The other performances are also consistently first-class, particularly Herb Edelman as Murray the cop, and Monica Evans and Carole Shelley as the chirping Pigeon sisters from upstairs. Jack Lemmon is agreeably cast as Felix, the finicky and desperate news writer who breaks up with his wife. Though it's difficult to compare his performance here to masterful bouts before and after, he inevitably brings a manic energy and pitiful vulnerability the role that indispensably defines the film as a bromance. He's not the most masculine fellow in the world, indeed embodying many feminine stereotypes, and this foil to Oscar's rugged manly grossness is automatically comic material, and their bonding is the universal conflict and reconciliation of the male's outward aloofness with its inner sensitivity.

Occasionally a movie's Broadway genesis is glaringly apparent, like when the characters in the poker game are clustered around three sides of the table with a forever nonexistent "downstage" side. Carting this stage course even further, director Gene Saks has left the same wall out of Oscar Madison's apartment! Indeed one of the benefits of film is that one can move the camera around and ultimately reveal all four walls of a set. Regardless, the energy, briskness and good-company feel of the characters, sets and scenes are all intact. Perhaps Saks didn't want to "filmify" because he felt the script's theatricality is inextricably linked with those qualities, which he produces with vim and vigor.