Wordiezett So much average

Grimerlana Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

JasparLamarCrabb Billy Wilder's last film is not a classic, but it's still highly enjoyable. Is it as funny as SOME LIKE IT HOT or as wicked as THE APARTMENT? No, but what is? A remake of the French film A PAIN IN THE A..., Walter Matthau is a hit man who has the misfortune of checking into a hotel room next to wacky suicidal Jack Lemmon. Lemmon goes from trying to kill himself to driving Matthau absolutely crazy. There no laugh out loud sequences, but Matthau & Lemmon are priceless. Matthau, with his affected Brooklynese, is hilarious. And who can beat any film that features not only Matthau & Lemmon, but Klaus Kinski and Paula Prentiss as well?!? A wonderfully entertaining film and a real bounce back for Wilder after his inert version of THE FRONT PAGE and his cryptic SUNSET BLVD-like FEDORA.

pizzathom This is a classic example of a film being produced simply because of the names involved. The plot is a weak attempt to make a Billy Wilder comedy in the eighties. I can almost hear how this was pitched to studio executives; "It's the Odd Couple meets Porky's"! Look, anytime the script invokes the clichéd name of Kowalski (always a cop, soldier, or construction worker)for a subplot character, you know the film is in trouble. This thing proves that without an original and inspired story, it's just a waste of truly great talent. This is the only film by Lemmon, Matthau, and/or Wilder that I cannot recommend. The only reason is gets more than a vote of "1" is that I reserve that number for the truly complete pieces of garbage, such as "Battlefield: Earth", "Ishtar", and "Can't Stop The Music".

Edgar Soberon Torchia We all watch films for different reasons. In 1981, it was a new film by film great Billy Wilder with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau after 1974's "The Front Page". But for me it was a new occasion to see the elusive Paula Prentiss on the big screen. She returned to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio where she made her first motion pictures, under different conditions, for the studio had been sold in the 1970s. An adaptation of Francis Veber's play "L'emmerdeur", previously made in France by Edouard Molinaro, the resulting screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is as offensive as a sexist joke, but that's no news in Wilder's movies. The film has a fast pace and funny moments, mostly sustained on the verbal interplay between Lemmon and Matthau as two misogynists typical of Wilder's cinema. Prentiss plays Celia Clooney, a TV reporter who has abandoned husband Lemmon for Klaus Kinski, a sexologist who runs a clinic to improve people's sexual life. Lemmon goes after Celia, but he gets into trouble and gun-play when he meets Trabucco, a hit man (Matthau). All men in this film are so dumb that it seems almost logical that by the film's end Celia has run away with another woman (the receptionist at Kinski's clinic, played by Wilder regular Joan Shawlee). After the indifferent reception to what was to be Wilder's last film and joke on male sexual fantasies, Prentiss retired from films.

kyle_furr This was Billy Wilder's last film. The movie stars Walter Matthau as a hit man who quickly gets p***ed with Jack Lemmon who keeps bothering him with his problems. Matthau just wants to finish his job and Lemmon won't let him. There is hardly anything funny in here expect for a couple of small laughs. You should watch The Fortune Cookie instead.