Search and Destroy: Neil Simon films

oooh, I haaated The Out Towners the one time I saw it on TV. One joke over and over, and Sandy Dennis at her most numbing. (v much invoked at the start of that SCTV skit above)

*Out of Towners

very tough but fair 2009 dissection by David Edelstein

Recent star-laden Broadway revivals of Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple have been embarrassments, prompting the Times’s Ben Brantley to write that “early Neil Simon retains its original freshness about as well as sushi”—a bit of bitchery made more devastating because you can imagine it popping up in a Simon play. (Something like: “Has it held up?” “Like 50-year-old sushi.” “They didn’t have sushi 50 years ago. You ate undercooked fish, you got tapeworm.”)

http://nymag.com/arts/theater/features/60154/

Rewatched The Odd Couple for the first time in ~25 years. Matthau's performance is really a joy for the ages. Lemmon is better than his mid-career usual, and everyone carried over from Broadway (the Pigeon sisters and the poker buddies) is perfect.

Also I forgot who Felix moves in with at the end.

eagerly awaiting your thoughts on Sweet Charity morbius, whenever you get around to it

otm on all counts morbs

but, verdict?

"now it's gah-bage"

btw I erred -- the only one of the movie's poker buddies who'd been in the Broadway cast was John Fiedler, the mousy guy you may know from the first Newhart sitcom.

As well as Star Trek:TOS and Winnie the Pooh cartoons

Sunshine Boys is still the laugh machine Eric H secretly knows it is