Thoughts on The Odd Couple II

 

via Giphy/Courtesy Paramount Pictures

"Here's my complimentary nuts. Go ahead. If your teeth keep chattering, you'll have peanut butter in three minutes."
"Oscar, do you know what the fat content of nuts is? Not to mention the salt content? I could have a heart attack at the wedding."
"Felix, I haven't seen you in -- how long, eight, nine years?"
"Seventeen. Seventeen years, Oscar. You couldn't even remember that we haven't seen each other for 17 years?"
"Tell you the truth, I didn't dwell on it. All right, 17 years. So your hair got whiter, your ears got bigger, your nose got longer. But you still retain that unique, elusive, pain in the ass quality that drives me berserk."

Once again, I'm going to try something with a Thoughts On entry. Let's see how many points The Odd Couple II ends up with. 

+265 -- Baseline points, or roughly the collective age of Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, screenwriter Neil Simon and director Howard Deutch at the time of filming. Deutch previously directed Grumpier Old Men.

+70 -- Our second and last goodwill points allocation, representing the 32 years of the Lemmon-Matthau duo, the 11 movies they both were involved with (including Kotch, JFK and The Grass Harp), the 4 movies they made in a less-than-five year span, concluding with this one, the 10 total Neil Simon movies either or both men made, the 6 total movie or TV movie projects both men made after this one, the 3 years Matthau lived after filming and the 4 years Lemmon lived after filming.

+10 -- Oscar (Matthau) is a retiree in Florida, having left New York when his paper was sold to "an Australian." He's not above flirting with a sexy young cop and his poker buddies are now mostly women. It's a character actress bonanza. We've got Alice Ghostley, Florence Stanley and Rebecca Schull, plus Estelle Harris showed up earlier as a flirtatious acquaintance.

-10 -- Introducing the characters with a poker game was done better in the actual play The Odd Couple. Plus, aside from Oscar, none of these folks matter. 

-20 -- Bruce Madison (Jonathan Silverman) and Hannah Ungar (Lisa Waltz) don't matter that much, either. Both are California-based actors, but his career is the fodder for only one joke. Florence explains that a pilot is a television show that doesn't get on TV. I guess Neil Simon figured that the audience was coming to see Lemmon and Matthau, so why bother doing something coy like introduce the couple and then reveal their fathers? Anyway, Bruce lets Oscar know that he and Hannah are "marrying this week in San Malina."

+5 -- Felix (Lemmon) is re-introduced as the 1990s version of the airline passenger from hell. He loudly clears his throat, complains to the flight attendant (Amy Yasbeck) about people having previously smoked on the plane and his fellow passenger's perfume, mentions how he had hoped for an unavailable in-flight meal and just generally makes you wish face masks were commonly worn decades earlier. It's character-driven stuff and Lemmon goes all-in, but I had forgotten how annoying Felix was.

-25 -- Running to reunite with Oscar, Felix trips over a suitcase and falls on his former roommate. Somehow, Felix ends up being the one with a sprained leg from this incident. The TV Tropes page for The Odd Couple II notes that it really makes no sense that Oscar and Felix are expected to transport themselves from L.A. to San Malina, a city whose name neither can remember. Silver Alerts have been issued for less!

-5 -- If the idea of Oscar and Felix going hours out of their way while mistakenly heading to a city they can't remember the name of isn't enough plot contrivances for you, we also have Felix's suitcase being left at the rental car office.

"Oh, really? Well, you have changed, Oscar. When I saw you at the airport, I thought you'd died, and your mother came to tell me."

"I heard that line on the Jerry Seinfeld show."

"So what? It's how fast I thought of it that counts. ... Open the window, will you? I want to throw the water (from ice for the sprain) out."

"It is open."

*Felix tosses the water ... at a closed window, getting himself drenched. He and Oscar react.*

"Sorry. They must have just cleaned it."

-30 -- I just had to claim that Paulie squandered its opportunity with a road movie premise, didn't I? I just had to ensure that I'd end up watching Oscar and Felix's travels for the next hour. Jack Matthews, The Los Angeles Times, declared that The Odd Couple II features "the worst writing Simon has ever done." It's hard to disagree with that.

-10 -- Yadda-yadda, they're on the wrong freeway, Felix is still unlucky in love ("Three divorces, two broken engagements and five women who disappeared on the first date. Went to the ladies room, never came back."), Oscar ends up destroying the roadmap with a cigar ("... The hot ashes fell on my crotch. The map caught fire. I had the choice of either finding the house or burning up one of the most important parts of my body. Guess which I picked?"), Felix discovers his suitcase is gone and thanks to a fit from Felix, the car not only rolls off a cliff, but explodes.

+10 -- Okay, I liked the gag where Oscar and Felix await cars coming from either of two directions in a four-way crossing, only to twice have cars speed by between them. The comic triple is reached when they're sprayed by a cropduster. "Who's gonna pick us up now? We look like a couple of Pillsbury Doughboys."

+5 -- Oscar and Felix get picked up by a man with a peach truck, which he leaves for a supposed family emergency. The old men are allowed to take the vehicle, and the rap for transporting illegal immigrants. Richard Riehle, fresh from committing domestic terrorism in Mercury Rising, shows up to play straight man with the old guys and set up a rule of three scenario.

-20 -- Yay, Christine Baranski and Jean Smart are here! Right? Right? The ladies play Thelma and Holly. I can't possibly top Stephen Holden's assessment in The New York Times. "Both (are) woefully miscast as Simon's notion of tough, middle-aged biker chicks." Oscar is easily the horniest of the four.

"The wick is almost out, Felix. I just want the candle to glow rather than curse the darkness."

"It's not going out, Oscar. Not yours, not mine. And I still hope that someday, we will both find the right lamplighter."

"You know, we just used so many metaphors that I forgot what the hell we were talking about."

+10 -- After Felix loosens up, the foursome have some fun, including dancing to "I Like It, I Love It." The girls end up ducking out early. No points for guessing why. The next day, Oscar and Felix are passengers of the very old Beaumont (Barnard Hughes). Beaumont drives his antique car especially slowly, which allows for some fun, albeit predicatble sight gags. Cars pass the trio, then a school bus, then bicylists, then joggers, then walkers.

+5 -- Beaumont dies. "At least he went quickly." "You call 12 miles an hour 'quickly'?" The cops come by, resulting in another appearance before Riehle and another quick establishment of innocence. Oscar and Felix are advised to get on the bus to San Malina ... which Thelma and Holly get on. 

-40 -- For whatever reason, Neil decided not to write anything notable for Christine and Jean's second appearance. They're just there to set up Oscar and Felix's next indignity, getting abducted with Thelma and Holly by the girls' jealous husbands. The sextet is caught and for the last time, Oscar and Felix appear before Riehle.

-50 -- Really, what on earth was the point of making The Odd Couple II other than a quick money grab? This is one superfluous flick. It's a superfluous flick with an unjustified sense of worth. The "trifecta" scene has Riehle commenting on the absurdity of the same two men being arrested three times for three different crimes and all by his men, followed by Oscar figuring that the odds of this happening are roughly 12 million to one, and in a place like Santa Menendez, California, to be in the trillions.

"Oscar, of all the differences that we have ever had, of all of the fights that we have ever had, of all of those petty arguments we have ..."

"(to Riehle) We can continue talking, 'cause he's gonna be on this for a half-hour."

"... Of all of the times I've wanted to choke you by the throat, this is the worst! If you say 'trifecta' one more time, I'm going to choke you until you are dead! And then that man can arrest me one more time for one more crime, one more time in his office, and he's gonna have a fourfecta! So you shut the fuck up, do you hear me?!"

"I think you can get a fourfecta in Cuba, but it's a cigar."

+10 -- Riehle gets a pretty good last line. "Andy, if those guys commit a triple murder or rob a bank, just let 'em go."

+10 -- A half-hour to go, and time to resume the lonely Felix storyline. He reunites with Felice (Mary Beth Peil), his ex-sister-in-law. She's willing to get reacquainted and Oscar's a good wingman. Now that I'm looking it up, Peil was only in her late 50s when she started playing Grams on Dawson's Creek. Anyway, Felix and Felice seem to be on their way to a good relationship, Doris Belack and Ellen Geer show up as Blanche and Frances and Oscar and Felix are friends again.

-10 -- The wedding nears and Bruce can't be found! Turns out he's got cold feet and was hiding on the roof. Joe Leydon, Variety, noted that this wasn't that far off from the third act of Plaza Suite, although it's resolved in less time. Bruce and Hannah get married, of course, and Felix's suitcase arrived in time.

+5 -- For the record, Felix's wedding present was a silver serving tray from Tiffany's and $10,000. Oscar's was antique baseball cards, which he figures Bruce can eventually sell and maybe buy his kids a week or two of college. Even though it's been established that Felix and Felice like each other, to the point where he's willing to spend some time with her in San Francisco, he still bunks with Oscar.

"Felix, tomorrow night I'll be sleeping in my own bed. It's not a great bed, but I love it, because it never talks during the night."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Osc. It's just, you know, it may be another 17 years before we see each other again."

"That's a date."

-20 -- Back in Florida, just as it was 30-odd years ago, Oscar's poker game is interrupted by Felix. Felice couldn't live up to his standards. Oscar will give living with Felix another try "for a few weeks."

Final Score: 165 points with goodwill, -130 points without goodwill.

Thoughts:

-- "If you didn't have the brains to pee back at the airport, how the hell would you know what the sign said?" "Reading and peeing are two different things." "At your age, you're lucky you can do either one."

-- Box Office: Grossing $18.9 million on an unknown budget, this opened at No. 7 and came in at No. 91 for 1998.

-- Awards Watch: The Odd Couple II earned a Stinkers nod for Most Painfully Unfunny Comedy, losing to Meet the Deedles.

-- Critic's Corner, the movie. "Written by the master, Neil Simon, who in this case is an emperor without any clothes," Roger Ebert wrote. "Did no one have the nerve to suggest a rewrite? To tell him that his story was slight, contrived and flat?" Owen Gleiberman went for the kill. "They're ancient, decrepit, toothless -- not just weary but ready for the grave ... I'm talking about Simon's jokes." He added that the dirty secret of The Odd Couple was that the Tony Randall-Jack Klugman sitcom was always the wittiest version of the story.

-- Critic's Corner, Lemmon and Matthau: "You would have expected (them) to convey a rich sense of their characters' comic history," Holden observed. "(They) are reduced to desperate mugging and shouting to try to pump some energy into their bickering dialogue." Matthews: "Frankly, it's a little sad to see the 77-year-old Matthau and the 73-year-old Lemmon going back to the well, especially when the Grumpy Old Men movies have already supplied two de facto Odd Couple sequels." Leydon: "(They) give performances that could be likened to a singer's greatest hits album." Ebert was kinder, saying that the men are "funny, familiar, edgy and smart. The Odd Couple II is not." Gleiberman: "Now that (Oscar and Felix are) literally grumpy old men, you just want them to shut up."

-- Like we talked about, The Odd Couple II marked the end of Neil Simon's career as a screenwriter. After the movie, he had four final original plays (Proposals, The Dinner Party, 45 Seconds from Broadway and Rose's Dilemma), a couple adaptations for TV (like 2004's The Goodbye Girl with Jeff Daniels, Patricia Heaton and Hallie Eisenberg) and a good number of revivals, including the inevitable take on The Odd Couple with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.

-- Castmember Connections: Besides Lemmon and Matthau, we have Silverman, whose entire Broadway career to date consists of Simon's "Eugene trilogy," Waltz, who appeared in the movie version of Brighton Beach Memoirs, Hughes, who was in The Good Doctor on Broadway, Belack, who was in Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Stanley, who was in The Prisoner of Second Avenue and Fools, and Baranski, who won a Tony for Rumors. Schull went on to be in 45 Seconds from Broadway. I'm sure I've missed a few. If you told me that Simon suggested the casting of most of the ensemble based on prior pleasant experiences, I'd believe it.

-- Today in Gay Panic: Oscar cuts short Felix's goodbye hug, or else Felice is "gonna think we had something going." I give it a 2 on the homophobia scale.

-- "This is the biggest, goddamndest deja vu anybody has ever had. Can we play cards here, please, for crying out loud?!"

-- Next: Sliding Doors. On deck: The Big Hit.