GRUMPY OLD MEN
A film review by Sarah M. Elkins
Copyright 1994 Sarah M. Elkins
1993, comedy
PLOT/KICK-OFF: A free-spirited teacher moves in across the street from two old guys with an old feud, inspiring them to woo her and play dirty tricks on each other. The plot is a little contrived in a few places.
CHARACTERS/ACTING: Jack Lemmon plays John Gustafson, a retired teacher alone except for his daughter (Daryl Hannah) and nasty neighbor Max (Walter Matthau). John's relationship with his daughter is a bit strained, but Max gets along fine with his son (Kevin Pollack), who tries to keep the guys from getting out of hand while campaigning for mayor. Ann-Margaret plays Ariel, the new neighbor.
CINEMATOGRAPHY/FX: okay
SCORE/SOUND: A mix of good and okay tunes, some choices a bit obvious.
VIOLENCE/GORE/LANGUAGE: Some of the insults and sexual euphemisms are a bit crude, but didn't seem out of character for those who said them. One fight, but everyone's well-padded in winter clothes.
SKIN/SITUATIONS: A kiss and Ann-Margaret in a leotard is the most we see; more is suggested.
ANALYSIS: The comedy in this movie is mostly, but not completely, derived from the feud. It ranges from insults to simple slapstick to some tricks with clever set-ups. Refreshingly, the movie doesn't depend on a lot of pop-culture references to show how hip it is, and it takes some time to develop its characters subtly instead of firing off 10 jokes a minute in the hopes that one will stick. I'm a big fan of Jack Lemmon so it's to be expected that I would like it as much as I did -- nice to see him in an entertaining comedy for once, instead of all these deathly serious things he's done lately -- but my friend who saw it with me is not a big fan and she laughed as much as I did. If you can roll your eyes to get past some of the crudities and contrivances, you might enjoy this simple, unpretentious little comedy.
- Sarah Elkins (elkins.wbst139@xerox.com)
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews