Victor la gaffe

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," although not the best film ever, is definitely a comedy classic. It took me a while to find it, which surprised once I had finished watching. The chemistry between Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau is amazing and it is as strong as ever in this film.

This is the film for everyone who has that one person in their lives that somehow manages to appear at all the wrong times and become more and more annoying with each visit. It's been said that we laugh because things are true, not because they're funny, and this film proves that. Sure, we've probably never met a suicidal television censor while trying to kill someone, but we can most likely all relate to how Walter Matthau feels always running into Jack Lemmon.

I tell everyone I know to watch this movie, and I've yet to hear anything bad about it. If you're in the mood for some good laughs and a classic comedy duo, then you must give "Buddy Buddy" a watching.

"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.

Jack Lemmon has a penchant for playing the suicidal guy after a bad break up. He did that in The Odd Couple as Felix Ungar and he's at it again here in Buddy Buddy.

Walter Matthau, on the other hand, is not a slob in this film, he's quite the opposite. Matthau plays Trabucco, an all business, very skilled hitman working for the mob. He's targeting his last hit from a hotel room across the street from the courthouse when his work is interrupted by the suicidal and neurotic Victor Clooney (Lemmon).

Buddy Buddy provided a few chuckles, mostly from Matthau. Lemmon is more of a ham but I'm not a big fan of the Abbott and Costello type comedy. You probably know the type:

"Why are my pants down?"

"For your shot."

"What shot?"

"The one the doctor gave you."

"What doctor?" and so on.

So, the laughs were light, but it was a delightful movie anyway.