Movie Review: The Odd Couple (1968)

A comedy about a friendship tested at close quarters, The Odd Couple sparkles with witty dialogue and two excellent performances.

In New York City, writer Felix Ungar (Jack Lemmon) is thrown out of the house by his wife after 12 years of marriage. Despondent and contemplating suicide, he eventually makes his way to the home of his best friend Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau), a sports reporter who has also experienced divorce. 

Oscar invites Felix to live with him, but the two men are very different: Felix is a cleanliness and tidiness freak and a proud chef. Oscar is a slob living on rotting food and proud of it. They soon start irritating each other, but the living arrangement is most severely tested when Oscar invites a couple of ladies over for a fun evening and Felix ruins the jovial mood with excessive sentimentality.

With Neil Simon adapting his own play and Gene Saks directing, The Odd Couple is a playful exploration of a friendship under pressure. How far the bond between the two men will bend before it breaks becomes a battle of wills, patience and empathy caught in the crossfire between diametrically opposed domestic expectations. While the film is mostly confined to Oscar's apartment and does not stray far from the stage origins, the humour is sustained, and Lemmon and Matthau bounce off each other to great effect. 

The tension and laughs are derived from two endearing characters. Felix is vulnerable and still absorbing the shock of his marriage coming to an abrupt end. He takes refuge in obsessive compulsive behaviour, driving Oscar and their poker buddies to distraction with exquisite housekeeping. Felix wants to be accommodating, but starts to suffer under Oscar's increasingly regimented expectations. Two men on divergent wavelengths under the same roof are soon mimicking the behaviour of a married couple in crisis.

Simon's dialogue is razor sharp, the repartee between the two men filled with barbs, sarcasm and throwaway remarks. Saks keeps his cameras moving within the confines of the apartment, and the catchy Neal Hefti theme music is deployed in good doses.

But the film's success resides with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and they bring to life two unforgettable men. Lemmon delivers Felix's nervous mannerisms with perfectly annoying accuracy, while Matthau's slouch and grumpy exasperated expression define the prototypical divorced slob.

The supporting cast members add plenty of brio. The loud and sweaty poker group includes Herb Edelman and John Fiedler arguing about chips, snacks, and humidity. Monica Evans and Carole Shelley are the sisters Cecily and Gwendolyn Pigeon (or is it the other way around), a brilliantly giggly transplanted English pair looking for a good time but unknowingly landing in the ever widening crevasse between Felix and Oscar.

Cranky and candid, The Odd Couple celebrates complicated cohabitation.



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Movie Review: The Prisoner Of Second Avenue (1975)

A drama with some humour about the stresses of city living, The Prisoner Of Second Avenue touches on some weighty issues but never quite finds it footing.

In New York City, Mel Edison (Jack Lemmon) and his wife Edna (Anne Bancroft) are a middle aged married couple living in an apartment building. The noise, crime, crowds and heat of the city are all getting to Mel, who is frequently irritable. With the economy in recession, he loses his office job.

The couple take a trip to the countryside to visit Mel's older brother Harry (Gene Saks), but Mel's mood remains bleak. Stuck at home all day, he starts to slip into a bitter depression. Edna finds a job, but when their apartment is burgled, Mel is tipped over the edge.

Written by Neil Simon as an adaptation of his play, The Prisoner Of Second Avenue tackles middle-aged anxieties as a bustling city starts to overwhelm an empty nest couple. Directed by Melvin Frank, the film is certainly talkative and largely confined to the Edison apartment, but enough familiar hassles are tossed at Mel and Edna to maintain narrative momentum.

Simon's trademark humour is evident in a few zinger lines, but overall the attempts at comedy sit uneasily with the overall serious subject matter. Mel cannot sleep, the couple are economically vulnerable, his depression hits hard, and Edna's ability to hold their marriage together starts to fray. His anger and frustration spill out in several tirades, and the film stumbles into awkward terrain where laughs are uncomfortable guests.

A few other script weaknesses erode the film's quality. For an essentially two-person drama, precious little is revealed about Mel and Edna's background. Simon barely bothers to define Mel's job (the setting is the most generic office), nor the work Edna secures (the milieu is the creative arts). The late introduction of Mel's sisters is clumsy, as is a bolted-on one-scene exposition of brother Harry's view of the tension between the brothers.

Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft ride out the rough passages with confident performances, theatrical for sure but with demonstrated conviction in their couplehood. A pre-stardom Sylvester Stallone as a suspected Central Park mugger, F. Murray Abraham as a taxi driver and M. Emmet Walsh as the building doorman have small roles.

The Prisoner Of Second Avenue has plenty to complain about, but shouts in uneven tones.



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Movie Review: Days Of Wine And Roses (1962)

A grim drama about the perils of alcoholism, Days Of Wine And Roses traces the agony of a middle class professional couple as they sink to the bottom of the bottle.

In San Francisco, Joe Clay (Jack Lemmon) works in public relations and easily reaches for a drink while schmoozing clients and fulfilling their unsavoury whims. He meets and quickly falls in love with Kirsten Arnesen (Lee Remick), the secretary of one of his clients. Kirsten is initially a non-drinker, but Joe introduces her to the pleasures of alcohol and soon they are both drinking heavily.

They get married and have a daughter, but his constant heavy drinking starts to take a toll on work performance. Joe is eventually re-assigned to a small account based in Houston and is forced to spend long stretches away from home, driving Kirsten to drink ever more heavily to combat loneliness. They both succumb to full-blown alcoholism and their lives enter an uncontrolled downward spiral. They reach out for help from Kirsten's father Ellis (Charles Bickford), a salt-of-the-earth landscape businessman, but any road to recovery will be treacherous.

While 1945's The Lost Weekend was about a struggling writer surrendering to his alcoholism, Days Of Wine And Roses brings the disease into mainstream living rooms. Here Joe and Kirsten are attractive, successful and respected young professionals with good careers and excellent future prospects. They have everything to lose and they test the boundaries of losing everything, their story a sobering tale of how quickly and easily the American dream can dissolve into an alcohol-saturated nightmare.

JP Miller adapted his own teleplay, while director Blake Edwards and star Jack Lemmon accepted the challenge of embracing full-on drama without a hint of the humour or even pathos that made them both famous. The result is a relentlessly bleak romance doubling down on tragedy, two lives all but destroyed as the couple enable each other's behaviour.

Whether they can recover a semblance of balance and normalcy is the subject of the film's second half, and Edwards painfully portrays the many false attempts at drying up. Each becomes ever more agonizing, the next spark of hope extinguished by succumbing to the singular first drink, months of progress dashed in an instant. Presented as one pathway out of the gutter, Alcoholics Anonymous received a real-life boost, here represented by Jack Klugman as a recovering alcoholic who reaches out to Joe at one of his low points.

Early in the film Edwards allows a few of the scenes to run longer than they need to, the initial courtship particularly laborious. And overall the script is robust but rarely finds a memorably cutting edge or poignant lyricism.

The two lead actors provide a boost whenever one is needed, as Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick embrace their roles with fearsome commitment. Both had actual struggles with alcohol, and here their performances are almost physically hard to watch. Whether rationalizing their drinking, wallowing in the happy haze of drunkenness or arguing loudly, Lemmon and Remick drive for the gritty realism of self-delusion rather than sympathy.

The film plays out to a soulful Henry Mancini soundtrack featuring judicious use of the award-winning title song, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Days Of Wine And Roses sounds like an idyllic romance, but as it turns out, it's either the wine, or the roses.

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Movie Review: Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

An adaptation of the David Mamet play, Glengarry Glen Ross examines the psyche of frenzied men in an ultra competitive business environment.

In New York, a group of salesmen work at a realty office, using unscrupulous tactics to peddle properties in Florida and Arizona to investors. Williamson (Kevin Spacey) is the office manager and hands out precious leads about potential buyers to the agents.

Roma (Al Pacino) has recently been achieving the best sales figures, and is now wearing down his latest client Lingk (Jonathan Pryce). In contrast the elderly Shelley (Jack Lemmon) is on a long losing streak and getting increasingly desperate, with family health issues adding to his stress. Moss (Ed Harris) is ambitious but unhappy at work, while George (Alan Arkin) feels he is losing his edge.

Blake (Alec Baldwin) arrives from head office and berates the salesmen for their recent poor performance, announcing that most of them will be fired if they don't immediately close more deals.  With Williamson safeguarding a deck of treasured new leads at the office, the men have just a few hours to prove themselves. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and an office break-in adds a new layer of tension to the already strained dynamics between the men.

Featuring a superlative all-male cast and a Mamet script, Glengarry Glen Ross (the title refers to two developments being peddled by the agents) is a profanity-filled high-energy talkfest. The film takes place over just a couple of days, but captures the trauma of alpha males growling at each other to gain every advantage and survive until the next batch of leads are distributed.

All the men are experts at deceit and underhanded sales tactics, and effortlessly flip between smooth talk, pleading and ultra aggressive put-downs depending on the immediate objective. And they are all also pathetic, Glengarry Glen Ross a study of manhood lost to the pursuit of shady profit by victimizing others.

Most of the film takes place at the office and the Chinese restaurant across the street. The theatrical origins are obvious, and some of the overclocked gestures translate poorly to the screen. But director James Foley keeps his focus on the talent-rich cast, often in close-up, and with most of the conversations walking on the edge of hostility, the film rides out the rough patches with ease.

Alec Baldwin's one scene performance as the slick downtown executive berating the sales agents for poor performance and goading them by comparing his success to their pathetic lives has entered into cinematic legend. Mamet added this scene to help extend the short play into feature film length, and while Baldwin's insults are never less than over the top, his unconstrained contempt perfectly sets the stage for the mood of desperation.

In a world where integrity and basic ethics are notably absent, Jack Lemmon shines as yesterday's man, surrendering Shelley to wounded melancholia living on past glories as he frantically seeks to catch a break by any foul means, unaware the sun has set on his career and sales tactics.

Glengarry Glen Ross is where life's dreams of success go to die, submerged in fast talking, subterfuge and self-imposed delusions.

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Movie Review: Missing (1982)

A geopolitical drama thriller based on real events, Missing lifts the veil on the American-backed military Coup d'état that toppled Chilean President Allende.

Chile, 1973. Charlie Horman (John Shea) is an American aspiring artist and writer. With his friend Terry (Melanie Mayron), Charlie is a trapped in a seaside resort town when the military junta stage a coup. With soldiers swarming the streets, civilians are abducted and shot almost at random. Charlie and Terry make it back to Santiago thanks to help from a group of mysterious American men and Charlie reunites with his wife Beth (Sissy Spacek).

But soon Charlie himself goes missing. and his father Ed (Jack Lemmon) flies in from the United States to try and locate him. Ed is a successful businessman and his relationship with the free-spirited Beth is strained, but they team up and try to get answers from the dense wall of on-the-ground American bureaucracy. Gradually they piece together Charlie's final few days and what may have prompted his disappearance.

Directed and co-written by Costa-Gavras, Missing is an often harrowing journey into the hell-on-earth created by violent regime overthrows. While the disappearance of Charlie Horman is front and centre, Missing is just as much about the background and context as it is about its central story. Costa-Gavras creates a milieu of chaos, where in every scene shots suddenly ring out, soldiers are in the corner of every fame terrorizing the streets, bullet-perforated dead bodies litter the sidewalks, and civilians are plucked from bus line-ups, summarily searched and bundled onto military vehicles.

And sometimes the horror is placed squarely in the foreground. Beth and Ed are eventually escorted to ground zero of civilian suffering, the stadium where detainees are held. Here the cold calculus of collateral damage is on full display, political decisions made thousands of miles away translated into abominable crimes against humanity.

Missing also works as a journey of awakening for Ed, who gradually has to face the implications of his blind belief in the greatness of his country. With Jack Lemmon in astounding form, Ed will finally get to know his son, start to appreciate his daughter-in-law, and receive a crash course in American foreign policy, and all the lessons are full of emotional pain.

Despite the documentary style recreation of a country undergoing a transformational convulsion, Missing does shortchange the local population. The Horman story is a personal tragedy, but the one missing American pales in comparison to the thousands of Chileans who lost their lives. They remain faceless and nameless victims, the film not investing enough in the local dimensions of the calamity.

Hard hitting and unblinking, Missing exposes the terrifying human devastation caused by the cold-blooded quest for global supremacy.

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Movie Review: Dad (1989)

A family drama, Dad tackles issues of aging and the complex dynamics between fathers and sons as well as husbands and wives.

In Los Angeles, elderly couple Bette and Jake Tremont (Olympia Dukakis and Jack Lemmon) are living out their retirement, with Bette controlling every last detail of Jake's life. As a result he is  disengaged, disinterested and utterly dependent. When Bette suffers a heart attack, their son John (Ted Danson) a Wall Street executive, flies in to help his sister Annie (Kathy Baker) and her husband Mario (Kevin Spacey) care for Jake.

John has not seen his parents for a few years and is shocked at Jake's emotional deterioration. With Bette in hospital, he sets about reviving his dad's spirit and love for life. Gradually Jake perks up and starts to take a much more active role in his own well-being. But more changes will impact Jake's promising rejuvenation: Bette returns home; John's wayward son Billy (Ethan Hawke) arrives for an unexpected visit; and an unwelcome health diagnosis will all play a role in the family's happiness.

Directed and written by Gary David Goldberg and based on a book by William Wharton, Dad enjoys a committed Jack Lemmon central performance, but is otherwise emotionally all over the place. With an intimate focus on familial matters the film is not many notches above standard television fare, but Lemmon at least ensures that great big-screen acting resides at the heart of the melodrama.

The film rides a nauseating emotional rollercoaster and crams too many sudden health turnarounds in less than two hours. Jake Tremont goes through about two and a half jarring down and up cycles in his physical and psychological well-being, dragging his small family along as he navigates up the mountain from the depth of despair to the giddiness of seemingly great health only to start another descent that precedes yet another climb. As a result Goldberg loses grip on what the film is intended to convey, with obscure and complex medical and psychological issues barely described before being allowed to run loose.

And Jake's health is far from the only matter of consequence: Dad also tries to explore the dynamic between a domineering wife and a submissive husband, an issue that probably deserved more exposition that it receives in the gaps between Jake's yo-yo health. And with John for the first time experiencing the fragility of his father's health, he reassesses his relationship with his own son Billy, and the film includes some decent side-quest scenes as the next generation attempts to avoid the same mistakes.

Ted Danson provides decent support, but is not helped by a script that never explains how he can suddenly shift gears, mentally and pragmatically, to be away for so long from his high-powered Wall Street job. Danson also struggles when the script demands strong displays of emotion, which are never his forte.

Dad offers some substantive topics, but overburdens its own capabilities.

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Movie Review: Airport '77 (1977)

A disaster movie with a galaxy of stars trapped on a submerged airliner, Airport '77 is as corny as can be expected but also surprisingly well produced.

Aging tycoon Philip Stevens (James Stewart) invites high profile guests to travel on his lavishly outfitted private Boeing 747 en route to the grand opening of his home-based museum. Captain Don Gallagher (Jack Lemmon) is in command of the flight, while Eve Clayton (Brenda Vaccaro) is Don's long-time lover and in charge of passenger comfort. The guests include Nicholas St. Downs III (Joseph Cotten) and Emily Livingston (Olivia de Havilland), who first met in the 1930s and are reunited on the flight. Businessman Martin Wallace (Christopher Lee) and his neglected and perpetually drunk wife Karen (Lee Grant) are also on the flight, as are Stevens' daughter Lisa (Pamela Bellwood) and her young son.

In the cargo hold is a large collection of expensive art, and this attracts a band of thieves under the leadership of co-pilot Chambers (Robert Foxworth). Over the Bermuda Triangle the criminals release a sleeping gas to knock out Gallagher and all the passengers, and Chambers changes course, flying below the radar towards an uninhabited island. But in dense fog the 747 clips an off-shore oil rig, the plane crashes into the sea and sinks to the sea bed, intact but leaking. Gallagher has to keep the passengers calm and find a way to notify rescuers of the plane's location while the Navy and Coast Guard mount a search operation.

Directed by Jerry Jameson, Airport '77 arrived relatively late in the cycle of 1970s disaster films. By now the formula is overly familiar: collect a bunch of mostly elderly Hollywood stars, place them in peril, and play a parlour game of who lives and who dies before the credits roll. While everything about the film is conventional, the production values are well above average, yielding a mixed experience where the content is tired but the packaging is slick.

Disaster movies tend to work better in confined spaces, and the coffin-under-the-sea premise is appropriately claustrophobic and generates a real sense of danger, with water slowly seeping into the plane, and the passengers threatened with both drowning and asphyxiation.

The film's ambitions are reflected in a superior cast deep in veteran talent. Lemmon and Cotten are most prominent and get to run around the bowels of the cavernous plane and play the role of heroes. The likes of Stewart, de Havilland, Grant and Lee ensure that as irritating as the passengers are, they are good at being irritating. George Kennedy makes his obligatory disaster movie appearance, but this time is limited to a more minor role as a rescue coordinator. The special effects are decent for the era and have survived the test of time.

The final act transforms into a propaganda piece for the rescue capabilities of the Navy and Coast Guard, and although again the cheese factor is odorous, the execution is polished. Jameson keeps the pacing tight, delivering the drama in under two hours, and the final acts of tactical implementation, heroism, and late-in-the-day death are completed with requisite precision.

Airport '77 is definitely all wet, but enjoys its time in the cinematic tub.

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Movie Review: Irma La Douce (1963)

A grand comedy and romance, Irma La Douce delves into the business of working girls and finds good laughs while refreshingly avoiding any hints of moralizing.

In Paris, honest police officer Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon) is newly assigned to the Casanova red light district, where prostitutes rule the street. The cafe run by the colourful Moustache (Lou Jacobi) is the local hangout for the girls and their pimps. Irma La Douce (Shirley MacLaine), famous for her green stockings and small pet dog, is the most popular of the girls, although she is treated roughly by her pimp Hippolyte (Bruce Yarnell).

The well-meaning but naive Nestor quickly gets himself into trouble by instigating a raid that disrupts the happy balance between the business of prostitution and police kick-backs. He is fired from the force, and after tangling with Hippolyte pursues a friendship with Irma that becomes a romance. But Nestor cannot stand the idea of his girl working as a prostitute, so with Moustache's help he adopts the secret disguise and persona of a wealthy British upper crust gentleman known only as Lord X, to richly pay for monopolizing Irma's time and eliminate the need for other customers. But Nestor is actually broke, so his already complex plan is bound to backfire in unexpected ways.

Directed by Billy Wilder, Irma La Douce is colourful and jovial, but also overlong and stretched too thin for the available material. The decision to strip the music out of the French stage musical while still aiming for 147 minutes of running time is curious. Wilder gets away with it thanks to a sharp script co-written with regular collaborator I.A.L Diamond, but a good 25 minutes could have been stripped off with no loss in quality.

This takes nothing away from what makes it onto the screen. The film is hugely enjoyable, with both Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in fine form. The stars previously teamed with Wilder on The Apartment and quickly slip into a zone of comic comfort. Lemmon gets to play two roles as Nestor Patou and Lord X, and in the guise of the latter he gets an opportunity to finally drop the befuddled everyman routine and spreads his wings as the quirky made-up English Lord. To make the point that the hapless remain hapless in any disguise, Patou financially drowns into further debt as the Lord, before finding himself accused of an unlikely murder.

MacLaine is steady as Irma, a grounded prostitute with a pragmatic outlook on her lot in life. Neither a whore with a heart of gold nor a caustic messed-up fallen woman, Irma is a businesswoman who is good at what she does and looks for opportunities to maximize profit while improving work conditions and take-home benefits.

The big bonus surprise of Irma La Douce is Lou Jacobi. A reliable source of laughs, he handles all the heavy lifting in the main supporting role of Moustache. The cafe owner with a chequered life history featuring numerous other professions, Moustache keeps his tall tales to the point, and all his sharp recollections end with the trademark but that's another story. For a long film, the rest of the supporting cast is poorly defined and listless.

Wilder breaks away from stage constraints and keeps the action moving between several locations (all unfortunately in the studio). The sets include the street, the cafe, a Casanova hotel room, a police station, Irma's apartment, a bustling farmer's market and a walkway by the Seine.

Irma La Douce pushes the envelope of what was acceptable in 1963 in terms of portraying sexuality and eroticism in a big budget Hollywood production. The business of sex is presented as a natural part of Parisian society, and in addition to not judging the prostitutes, MacLaine (in a role originally intended for Marilyn Monroe) goes to bed naked and slips in and out of a succession of revealing outfits and lingerie. Lemmon is much more clumsy, but also gets to undress.

Humorous, vivid and just a tad overblown, Irma La Douce is an amusing romp through the hazards of an unlikely romance.

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Movie Review: Some Like It Hot (1959)

A madcap comedy and romance, Some Like It Hot is a brilliantly constructed celebration of romance at its most complicated, incorporating gender politics, criminals on the loose, and an audacious anything goes, nothing to lose attitude.

It's 1929 in Chicago. Penniless friends and musicians Joe (Tony Curtis), a risk-taking saxophonist, and Jerry (Jack Lemmon), a more cautious double bass player, narrowly escape a police raid on an illicit nightclub run by mobster "Spats" Colombo (George Raft). Still reeling, Joe and Jerry are next unwilling witnesses to a St. Valentine's Day-type massacre perpetuated by Spats on informant "Toothpick" Charlie (George E. Stone) and his men. Desperate to leave town to avoid Spats' wrath, Joe and Jerry dress up as women, adopt the personas of Josephine (Joe) and Daphne (Jerry), and join an all-girls music band heading to Miami.

Jerry: [in high heels] How do they walk in these things, huh? How do they keep their balance?
Joe: It must be the way the weight is distributed. Now, come on.
Jerry: It's so drafty. They must be catching cold all the time, huh?
Joe: Will you quit stalling? We're gonna miss the train.
Jerry: I feel naked. I feel like everybody's staring at me!
Joe: With those legs, are you crazy? Now, come on.
[They see Sugar Kane]
Jerry: Look at that! Look how she moves. That's just like Jell-O on springs. She must have some sort of built-in motors. I tell you, it's a whole different sex!
Joe: What are you afraid of? Nobody's asking you to have a baby.

On the train, they meet singer and ukulele player Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), and both men fall madly in love with her. Sugar confides in Josephine and reveals all her hopes and aspirations, including exactly what she desires in a man. Joe uses the information to take on the new persona of young intellectual millionaire Junior, heir to the Shell Oil fortune, and starts a serious pursuit of Sugar. Meanwhile Jerry (as Daphne) finds himself the target of lecherous eldery millionaire Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown). With Spats still seeking to eliminate witnesses to the Chicago killings, Joe and Jerry frantically try to sort out their increasingly complex romantic entanglements and save their lives.

Jerry: Dirty old man...I just got pinched in the elevator.
Joe: Now you know how the other half lives.
Jerry: Look at that. I'm not even pretty.
Joe: They don't care. Just so long as you're wearing a skirt. It's like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
Jerry: Really. Well I'm sick of being the flag. I want to be a bull again.

Directed by Billy Wilder, who also co-wrote the script with I.A.L. Diamond, Some Like It Hot is one of Hollywood's perfect comedies. The laughs are derived from the ridiculous situations, the wild pacing and lust made troublesome by mixed-up genders. The dialogue is filled with zingers, the cast is deep with talent, and the script finds a loony groove and does not stop. The two hours are filled with frantic moments, and the antics of Joe and Jerry keep piling up. By the end of the film Joe has three personas, Jerry is still pining for Sugar but being pursued by both a millionaire and a bellboy, gangsters are at war with each other, and somehow it still all makes sense.

Osgood: You must be quite a girl.
Daphne: Wanna bet?

With the 1950s about to turn into the 1960s, Wilder and Diamond push the boundaries of sexual innuendo well past typical expectations for the era. With the plot device of an all-girls band providing the excuse for plenty of barely-dressed women to parade past Joe and Jerry in drag, Wilder deploys Marilyn Monroe as his weapon of mass distraction. Although apparently a horror on the set due to pill addiction, Monroe has never looked or acted better as the explosively innocent woman unaware of her impact on men. As an added bonus she also performs three songs at her breathiest best. For most of the second half of the film Wilder dresses her in daring possibly see-through dresses (impossible to tell in black and white) with just enough coverage to get past the censors.

Sugar: Water polo? Isn't that terribly dangerous?
Junior: I'll say. I had two ponies drowned under me.

And with Joe-as-Junior pretending to have lost interest in women and daring Sugar to cure him on Osgood's yacht, she needs no further invitation to unleash all her expertise to get a rise out of the millionaire of her dreams. Meanwhile, back on shore Jerry-as-Daphne and Osgood dance up a storm all the way until dawn to the tango tune of La Cumparsita, and in the morning Jerry is quite convinced that he will be marrying Osgood.

Jerry: Have I got things to tell you!
Joe: What happened?
Jerry: I'm engaged.
Joe: Congratulations. Who's the lucky girl?
Jerry: I am!
Joe: WHAT?!
Jerry: Osgood proposed to me! We're planning a June wedding.
Joe: What are you talking about? You can't marry Osgood.
Jerry: Why, you think he's too old for me?

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon have rarely been better and perfectly complement each other. Curtis as Joe is more cerebral, more adventurous and much more likely to get the pair into trouble, while Lemon as Jerry is more of a worrier but also more willing to follow along and complain about it. George Raft provides the counterbalance by playing it straight as mobster Spats, and Wilder again breaks ground by mixing comedy with brutal massacres and Tommy gun violence.

Some Like It Hot has fun at the expense of both genders and all ages. The film ends with a classic exasperated admission that while love can be hot and messy, no relationship and no one sex is perfect, which is exactly why there is so much fun to be had.

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Movie Review: Mister Roberts (1955)

A World War Two multi-character drama set on a cargo ship in the Pacific, Mister Roberts features a dream cast in fine form debating man's destiny and military discipline. But the film can't quite shake its more hokey elements and the confining stage origins.

With World War Two coming to its conclusion, the US cargo ship Reluctant is on duty somewhere in the Pacific, keeping the rear lines supplied under the baking sun and very far away from any combat operations. Lieutenant Doug Roberts (Henry Fonda) is the executive officer, has the respect of the men, and shields them from the dictatorial antics of Captain Morton (James Cagney). Also on board is the world-weary "Doc" (William Powell) and the young Ensign Pulver (Jack Lemmon). The latter is in charge of "laundry and morale", but is trying to ride out the war while doing exactly nothing.

Roberts is desperate to be involved in combat missions before the war ends, and repeatedly requests reassignment to the front lines. Morton knows that Roberts is essential to the successful functioning of Reluctant, and refuses to endorse Roberts' applications. With Morton pushing the crew ever harder, Roberts has an opportunity to relieve the mounting pressure on his men, but at the cost of his own principles and desires.

Through a combination of round-edged drama and mild humour, Mister Roberts celebrates the men who missed the business end of the war and yet contributed the unglamorous work that ensured success. It's a rare perspective, with a focus on friction, camaraderie, restlessness and boredom among men stationed far from home and far from the action, suffering through all the drawbacks without any opportunities to confront the enemy.

The film is dominated by the talent of a fine cast, and the performances overcome a somewhat creaky script weighed down by the story's theatrical roots. Despite Fonda, Cagney and Powell (in his last film role) all being too old for their roles, they deploy the full depth of their talent to give the film a distinguished air. The younger Lemmon mugs his way towards an Academy Award as the officer who moves from the fringes of trouble towards the eye of the storm, in what would prove to be a template for his career persona.

A troubled production featured director John Ford sparring with Fonda, an altercation that eventually led to a physical tussle. Ironically, it was Ford who had insisted on Fonda reprising his Broadway role as Roberts, despite Warner Bros. worries that he was too old. Fonda had also spent seven years away from the movies, and the studio was concerned his screen appeal was dimming. Ford's ill health eventually forced him to quit the project; Mervyn LeRoy and an uncredited Joshua Logan (director of the stage production) finally tidied up the project with plenty of reshoots.

Almost the entire film takes place on the Reluctant, and creating two hours of war drama with no enemies in sight and no shots fired unsurprisingly proves to be a stretch. In between the unfolding tension between Roberts and Morton, there are long-winded filler scenes about sailors ogling on-shore nurses; nurses coming on board the ship for no defined purpose; and the manufacturing of a cheap whiskey-like concoction from an assortment of chemicals. Ensign Pulver gets to play with a large home-made firecracker, and eventually manages to flood the boat with soap suds in a sequence better suited to broad vaudevillian farce. Apart from making the point about the soul-crushing boredom of service in the war's deep background, these scenes add little to the film's central narrative while consuming plenty of trite minutes.

The story that does matter is a battle of wills, effectively delivered: the principled Roberts believes the war of his life is passing him by; the tyrannical dufus Morton considers captaining the Reluctant to be the pinnacle of his career and needs Roberts to stick around since he holds the men together. The playful Pulver, the one character with something resembling an arc, is the clever but carefree officer who will grow into his responsibilities.

The script by Logan and Frank S. Nugent settles for a tone of light drama with occasional dips into more serious territory. But on the small boat there is not much room for nuance: when the central conflict between Roberts and Morton spills into the open, it's all conveyed in stark contrasts between villainy and sacrificial heroism, the emotions setting sail into simplistic waters. Mister Roberts avoids complexities, but does contemplate different layers of ambition.

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Movie Review: It Should Happen To You (1954)

A featherweight romantic comedy, It Should Happen To You benefits from a vibrant Judy Holliday and takes a few perceptive shots at the shallow world of fame, but otherwise has limited substance.

Free-spirited New York fashion model Gladys Glover (Holliday) has lost her job, but still dreams of being famous. Wandering through Central Park she meets budding photographer Pete Sheppard (Jack Lemmon), who has a down-to-earth view of life and cares little for the celebrity culture. Pete immediately falls in love with Gladys, but she is pursuing her dreams of fame and fortune. Gladys then spots an empty billboard in Columbia Circle and invests all her savings into buying the space and putting her name up in bold letters.

The Adams Soap Company usually rents that advertising board, and company executive Evan Adams III (Peter Lawford) attempts to negotiate with Gladys, offering her money and several alternative billboards around the city to free up the lucrative Columbia Circle location. Evan also starts to fall in love with Gladys, and as her dream of becoming famous suddenly becomes real, it's up to Pete to try and keep her feet on the ground while trying to win her heart.

It Should Happen To You predicts the ever increasing obsession with celebrity for the sake of celebrity, Gladys literally buying her way to notoriety and gaining fans, and then a contract, simply by emblazoning her name on billboards. Her stunt is the most crass form of marketing, and it works, an indictment of the industry and the public's fascination with a familiar name.

With a limited, one-idea premise, the film's appeal resides with Holliday, and she delivers with a deft comic touch. Holliday keeps Gladys on an even keel, mixing starry-eyed determination with large doses of naivete as she strides towards her goal of being a somebody. Her eyes are only opened when she gets close to the success she craves, and unfortunately the Garson Kanin script saddles her with a sudden and unconvincing awakening to the hazards of her ambition.

Lemmon, in his first credited role, quickly establishes his screen persona as normal man happy to be the voice of reason and one of the crowd, but still marching to the beat of a slightly peculiar drummer. His role as Pete is the straightforward conscience of Gladys, and although there are traces of chemistry between them the romance remains a stretch. Overall, the love triangle between Gladys, Pete and Evan plays second fiddle to the commentary on Gladys' fascination with fame.

Director George Cukor keeps the pacing brisk and wraps up the movie in 86 minutes. It Should Happen To You lingers just long enough to deliver it's simple message, then moves along like a time-limited ad campaign.

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The Movies Of Jack Lemmon

All movies starring Jack Lemmon and reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

It Should Happen To You (1954)

Phffft (1954)

Mister Roberts (1955)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

The Apartment (1960)

Days Of Wine And Roses (1962)

Irma La Douce (1963)

Good Neighbor Sam (1964)

The Fortune Cookie (1966)

The Odd Couple (1968)

The Prisoner Of Second Avenue (1975)

Airport '77 (1977)

The China Syndrome (1979)

Missing (1982)

Dad (1989)

JFK (1991)

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.
The Index of Movie Stars is here.