GRUMPY OLD MEN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: This is a trite and formulaic comedy
for people who think it is funny to see old men acting like
naughty children. Good actors cannot save this thin script
with shallow characters facing straw crises. Better films
than this are being made for TV. Rating 0 (-4 to +4).
The town of Wabasha, Minnesota, has seen for years the battle of two now crotchety next-door neighbors, friends from youth and at the same time enemies since not long after. John (Jack Lemmon) and Max (Walter Matthau) seem to live to play nasty jokes on each other. In their 70s, there now is little in either's lives but watching television, ice fishing, and tormenting the other. Then a likable, sexy kook moves in across the street. Now the two old men have a new activity, stairing out the window at Ariel (Ann-Margaret). And they have a new conquest to be rivals for. Ariel is someone who lives life rather than retreating from it the way John and Max do. Ariel is like a mystical force in Max and John's lives. Her presence in Wabasha is never very well explained, nor is what she lives on, nor even her interest in Max and John. But her presence will transform them.
Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau are almost a classic comedy team after THE ODD COUPLE, THE FORTUNE COOKIE, and THE FRONT PAGE. But director Donald Petrie seems at a loss as to how to tap into that comic potential. The fault is not his and is certainly not his actors' but that of a poorly written screenplay by Mark Steven Johnson. At its best, the screenplay makes palatable some trite points about living life and taking risks. But the film indulges itself too much in showing old men cussing and using sexually explicit language as if that was in itself supposed to be hilarious. Actually we get to see that Lemmon and Matthau really do have a chemistry together still as we see them joking with each other in the outtakes run under the final credits. But when the cameras were rolling for real and they had to follow Johnson's script, somehow all the chemistry evaporates. Petrie did much better with MYSTIC PIZZA a much more keenly observed regional comedy.
GRUMPY OLD MEN is over-powered with a very good cast who just are not needed in the parts they have gotten. At 52 Ann-Margaret is starting to lose her figure but little of her appeal. And in addition somewhere along the way she has learned to act to the point I would almost classify her as under-appreciated. Burgess Meredith is incredibly wasted as a foul-mouthed nonagenarian. Daryl Hannah and Ossie Davis are around in smaller parts than they deserve and ones they should have let go to less familiar actors.
GRUMPY OLD MEN is a very fluffy film people who think it is funny to see old men fighting like children and repeatedly calling each other "putz" and "moron." If you list ten crises that old men might face, two of them will probably be in this film. This one has a moment or two, but the rest fails to click. I give it a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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