Month: September 2021

Another film I wasn’t sure if I had watched until it started. If I was certain, I wouldn’t have watched because it’s silly trash and so similar to other trashy films that are more entertaining. James Spader is a wuss who lives a bland, but relatively successful life. Rob Lowe is the devil who gets his amusement from turning Spader’s life upside down whether James wants it or not. Lowe is one dimensional and hammy in his role with little menace. Spader would have done it better, but Lowe wouldn’t have been any better in reversed roles. Christian Clemenson is James’s brother, a thankless role where he brings more skill than this film deserves. The ending is too neat and unsatisfying.

It was purely coincidence that I grabbed another Neil Simon work after watching The Odd Couple II. This one has a similar issue that the schtick had really funny parts (it even had me comparing it somewhat to Clue), but when there were attempts at building a story, the whole thing feel apart and was just mind bogglingly confusing. The cast were quite dedicated to the parodies they were portraying with Peter Falk as the namesake detective and Louise Fletcher, Stockard Channing, Eileen Brennan, Ann-Margret, Madelyn Kahn, and Marsha Mason all playing different love interests.

As a sequel to the original The Odd Couple, this one doesn’t really serve any purpose. The story as much as there is of one doesn’t offer any explanation as to what happened in the relationship of Felix and Oscar in the last almost-twenty years. As a chance to see one last pairing of Lemmon and Matthau, it’s pretty good. When it doesn’t get bogged down with the pretext of having a story, it’s an often funny romp of a road trip flick.

As an attempt to flesh out the story of the classic country song of the same name, this film has some highly questionable messaging on sexual identity. The teen leads’, Robby Benson and Glynnis O’Connor, performances are very earnest and they play well off of each other. The Mississippi setting and even the accents are fully realized and consistent, though I do question a bit how accurate some of the happenings were to the South in the 1950s.