Amigos, Amigos, Negócios à Parte

Jack Lemmon is Victor Clooney, a man who wants to commit a suicide and Walter Matthau is a hitman called Trabucco.When these two run into each other in the same hotel it can only mean lots of funny moments.Buddy Buddy from 1981 is an excellent Billy Wilder comedy.Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau are amazing together and they always were.Unfortunately Mr Lemmon passed away last week on June 27 on cancer.He was 76 years old.That made me and many other Jack Lemmon fans very sad.Walter Matthau died last year.We never get to see this great comedy couple together again. But you can always watch their great movies on TV.This movie is a must see for every Matthau and Lemmon fan.There isn't a dull moment in this movie.Don't miss it.

I was lucky enough to find this movie posted on that famous video site, and sat down for what I thought was going to be a disaster. Billy Wilder's final film, as I've read and heard, was a disaster. Awful, a terrible end to the most brilliant of film careers. Well, after watching "Buddy Buddy" I find that I don't agree with that harsh assessment.

Jack Lemmon plays his usual role, the put on Everyman. But to say that in a negative light is wrong. He played that character so well, that it is a pleasure to see him do it again. This time, he is trying to win back his estranged wife of 12 years, who has left him for a sex clinic doctor.

Playing against type, is Walter Matthau playing a hit-man who has one last job to complete before retirement and a life of leisure on an island near Tahiti. As fate would have it, both men find themselves in the same hotel with much different objectives. Lemmon to end his life, and Matthau to end a mob snitches life, before he's able to testify in a big trial.

Needless to say, hijinks ensue, and in my opinion, some really funny scenes. I won't spoil it, but give Buddy Buddy a chance. Is it "The Odd Couple"? No. Is it worth a watch for some harmless entertainment? Absolutely.

"Buddy Buddy", the final film of the genius that was Billy Wilder, is a decent comedy but not a worthy ending to his career. It's a remake of the French film "L'Emmerdeur", but I haven't seen it and am therefore incapable of comparison.

Someone pointed out that the movie looks a lot older than it is. I very much agree.

It is sad to see geniuses like Wilder and Diamond putting something as awkward as genital jokes into their script. Surprisingly, there is one clumsy slapstick moment. There are genuinely funny scenes and lines, too ("Father, you said the F word"), but they are a minority. Some attempts at creating humour fail terribly, as if made by amateurs (Lemmon chair-bound); most merely produce nods of acceptance.

Matthau is good and Lemmon is amusing as expected. However, Paula Prentiss's performance is really disturbing, intentionally or not, and Kinski's character is just annoying - and I mean written that way.

Overall the film, entitled here "Varsinaiset kumppanukset" ("Some Buddies"), isn't nearly as embarrassing as I'd expected; a mere shadow, nevertheless, it is of its director's previous masterpieces - if even that. But be not fooled: Wilder can't go bad (granted, I still have a lot to see). A few, pardon my French, comedy nuggets make this decent as an entertainment, and its two stars are okay. "Buddy Buddy", then, as a title... Meh.

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.

P. S. I just saw it again today (wow, 41 years since its release), and I found it very funny. And looney too! With many dialogues, characters and situations that I missed the first time.

Although "Buddy Buddy" is yet to be regarded as a modern movie classic, no other films have made me realize the art of comedy such as this one. Walther Matthau is hillarious in his portrayal of Trabucco the assassin who is constantly being interrupted from doing his dirty deeds, by an even more astonishing and suicidal! Jack Lemmon. Director Billy Wilder has captured moments on tape that we all seem to relate to one way or another. Together with german actor Klaus Kinski, who more often played deeper roles than this, Lemmon and Matthau gives a performance one would normally find on a broadway theatre.