Grumpy Old Men (Blu-ray)
APPROX. 104 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1993 - MPA RATING: PG-13
" ...sort of a one-note picture, but luckily that one note is often pretty humorous.
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It's no "Odd Couple."
Still, considering that Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau made ten or eleven films together, this 1993 pairing of the two actors late in their careers was one of their most popular. "Grumpy Old Men" remains amusing, and endearing, too, thanks not only to the stars but in no small measure to the contributions of real old-timer Burgess Meredith. While the movie would not have been among my current top choices for a Blu-ray high-definition transfer, I'm hardly complaining since it came out looking so good.
In "Grumpy Old Men" Lemmon plays a widower, retired high-school history teacher John Gustafson, and Matthau plays another widower, retired TV repairman Max Goldman. They are both in their late sixties and early seventies and have known each other all their lives. Now, they live next door to one another in the little Minnesota town of Wabasha. And they hate each other. They've been quarreling, fighting, playing practical jokes, and calling one other names for over fifty years, ever since a squabble over a woman. Their only common interest is ice fishing, which they do in separate cabins on a frozen lake. It's their stormy relationship that's at the heart of the story, and the two actors are so good at what they do, having performed together so often, it's a pleasure to watch and listen to them interact.
If the screenwriter, Mark Steven Johnson ("Daredevil," "Ghost Rider"), and the director, Donald Petrie ("Miss Congeniality," "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Day") could have just kept the two main characters bickering, it might have improved the movie. However, you can't really have a story without a plot, and that's where the movie suffers. There isn't much plot, and what plot there is is so thin, we might have been better off just listening to the two actors squabble for two hours. Instead, we get a bundle of half-developed characters and half-baked ideas.
The best of the peripheral characters is Pop Gustafson (Burgess Meredith), John's randy, ninety-four-year-old father, who gets some of the film's best lines, thanks to his lecherous temperament. However, he isn't in the picture for more than a few minutes. Then, there's the comely widow, Ariel Truax (Ann-Margret), who moves in across the street from John and Max. She's a free-spirited college teacher, outgoing, vivacious, and not a little pushy. John and Max immediately set out as rivals to court her. However, we can see the outcome of this competition a mile in advance. Next, there's the business of John losing his house over some unpaid taxes to the IRS; however, that, too, barely gets off the ground before we foresee its outcome.
And there are Daryl Hannah as Melanie, John's daughter, who's going through a separation from her husband; Kevin Pollak as Jacob, Max's bachelor son, who's running for town mayor and who has always had a crush on Melanie; Ossie David as Chuck, the owner of a local bait shop and lunch counter; and Buck Henry as Mr. Snyder, the coldhearted IRS agent intent on putting a lien on John's house. However, like most everyone else, these characters and their situations get little actual screen time.
