GRUMPY OLD MEN
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
GRUMPY OLD FARTS... ER, MEN
(1993) **1/2 (out of four)
Most people should be able to find better things to do than spend two hours hearing 80-year-old hemorrhoid sufferers yell "Eat my shorts!" at each other. That's pretty much the maturity level of this movie. After all, what could you expect Walter Matthau to follow DENNIS THE MENACE with? The sad part is, though, I actually found a lot of this amusing.
GRUMPY OLD MEN consists of Walter and Jack Lemmon hurling childish insults at each other and pulling equally childish pranks. Over the course of your two lucky hours watching this movie (which hopefully you didn't pay $7.50 to see), you'll see Matthau sink Lemmon's icehouse, Lemmon put a fish in Matthau's car, Matthau arrange for a giant mound of snow to fall on Lemmon's head, Lemmon cancel Matthau's social security, etc. This movie may make the nation's opinion of the elderly fall even lower than the Medic Alert commercial ("I've fallen... and I can't get up!") did.
Then, midway through the movie, the plot shifts as Lemmon and Matthau make a bet on which one can bed Ann Margret first. That's got to be more than any sane individual can take. But if you stick around for the closing credits, you'll hear a 90-year-old Burgess Meredith's colorful euphimisms for sex. Oh, great. Nothing seems more funny to me than the "horny old man" stereotype saying things like, "Looks like he's about to take the skin boat to tuna town." Maybe euthanasia's not as cruel as we thought...
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