'Out to Sea'
A movie review by Walter Frith
The talents of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau are terrific. They probably have more comic chemistry between the two of them than any other comedy team working today. They are about four weeks into making a sequel to 1968's 'The Odd Couple' which is scheduled to be released next year to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first film. 'Grumpy Old Men' (1993) and 'Grumpier Old Men' (1995) are hilarious parodies on finding love late in life and both actors excelled in those movies as well as they did many years ago in 'The Fortune Cookie' (1966) for which Matthau won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actor. Lemmon directed Matthau in a touching and poignant story of elderly life in 'Kotch' (1971) for which Matthau was nominated for Best Actor.
'Out to Sea' has the two buddies playing brothers in law. Lemmon was married to Matthau's sister and she is now deceased and widower Lemmon reluctantly goes on a cruise with Matthau and innocently searches for love while Matthau's got (quote) "lonely rich broads" (unquote) on his mind. Upon arriving aboard the cruise ship, Matthau informs Lemmon that instead of paying for the cruise, he signed them both up as dance hosts. Lemmon is outraged and tries to get off the ship before it sails to no avail.
This movie has all the fun of a jack in the box with jokes popping up everywhere and the comedy is equally funny both verbally and physically as Lemmon and Matthau avoid giving the film edge and cruise along smoothly (almost effortlessly) in their comic genius much in the way they did in the 'Grumpy' movies but their characters are much different and much more attractive. Director Martha Coolidge does an excellent job of keeping the timing intact in all the routines and the closing credits feature outstanding and hilarious outakes which are only appropriate to show in comedy films. To dislike this film would be difficult because its simplicity and wholesome appeal is equal to spending a quiet afternoon with your grandparents. It's a joy.
Other cast members include Dyan Cannon, Brent Spiner, Gloria DeHaven, Elaine Stritch, Hal Linden and dancing legend Donald O'Connor.
OUT OF 5> * * * 1/2
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