Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: To most people, Shirley MacLaine is nothing...But I saw this movie because she was in it, and Jack Lemmon, Edie, and Fred surprised me as well as Billy Wilder. If you haven't seen this movie, you're really missing something. In good old Black and White, the story revolved around Bud Baxter (LEMMON) who rents out his apartments to his unfaithful "marriage-wise" bosses. Therefore, he gets a promotion. One of the "5 bad apples" is Mr. Sheldrake, who is going with Bud's girl, Fran Kubelik (MacLAINE). The pairing was excellent, I suppose "Irma La Douce" has to be this good because it reunites these two. Just to see Shirley cry melts your heart, and watching her fall in love is about just as good. I really suggest this movie to you classic movie watchers. I loved it. Kudos to Shirley and Jack, you both should've won Oscars!
Rating:
Summary: Movie Moment
Review: One of the few truly great movie moments for me (great in terms of the shorthand Wilder and Diamond employ in letting a single shot replace what could be additional exposititory dialogue, and great in the thump I get in my chest every time I see it): the broken compact mirror. Not the first time we see it--the second time. That and the moment in "Rear Window" when Burr looks up from Grace Kelly's hand straight into the camera are my two favorites.This isn't exactly a review of the entire movie, but I hope it piques your curiosity.
Rating:
Summary: Watch it only in widescreen!
Review: Why watch the ending squeezed anamorphically into your TV? It's too wonderful a movie to lop off the sides of it to fit your little boxy screen. You don't cut off the sides of an oil painting just to fit your frame, do you?
Rating:
Summary: Lemmon's Best
Review: What can I say about this movie? Just watch it. Lemmon gives the performance of his life. MacMurry is wonderfully detestable and Shirly Maclaine is piteable and sympathetic. Lemmon does a marvelous job with his character, making him by turns funny and sad. No wonder it won Best Picture. Laughter and tears are mixed in this wonderul movie. Watch it now.
Rating:
Summary: Great, Great Movie--too often overlooked
Review: This is a great film that is (despite winning a best picture Oscar) too often overlooked when people speak of Wilder. Many people claim that "Some Like It Hot" is Wilder's funniest movie. From my perspective, however, "The Apartment" should have that claim. "Some Like It Hot" seems to me today to be outdated, with many of the jokes and situations falling flat (the man-as-woman joke has simply been worn into the ground over the past 40 years). "The Apartment," however, is amazingly funny--especially considering its subject matter: corporate scheming and corruption, adultery, suicide, loneliness and individual despair. It is a bitterly funny movie, but one with a great deal of warmth and pertinence as well. The scenes between Lemmon and McClaine are wonderful, of course, but Lemmon's scenes with the doctor next door are equally good. What makes this film work is that everything is based in real world experience (sometimes painfully, sometimes hilariously so), and rarely does it goes over the top.
Rating:
Summary: You were having army maneuvers maybe?
Review: Capturing the world of corporate politics, love, loneliness and city life The Apartment hooks ones soul. Christmas in a lonely city - the raging debilitating fever and the yearning for someone so close and yet so far away. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine sum up the emotions of the corporate cog - lambs running with wolves. Never a wasted frame, excellent photography and score, with winning lines delivered by a cast of character actors. Capturing a time and a place precisely because it wasn't trying - this movie IS NYC in those years before teenagers affected the way adults lived, worked and dressed.
Rating:
Summary: Shut Up and Deal
Review: The Apartment first bowled me over when I was 17--when I fell in love with the Shirley McLaine character, Fran Kubelick. One of the triumphs of this film is that it manages to be a very moving love story, very funny comedy and very dark satire without diluting its emotional, comic or intellectual impact. I think it's one of the best films ever made, and certainly my personal favourite. Fred MacMurray's screen persona exuded avuncular reassurance. By exposing his character, in The Apartment, as a ruthless, manipulative liar, director Billy Wilder neatly exposes the corruption at the heart of the seeming benevolence of corporate America in 1950s. The Apartment is about ordinary people trying to act decently in the urban, corporate jungle-"the people who get took" up against "the takers". Of course it is the takers (Mr Dobisch, Mr Kirkeby and their Bronx floozies) who provide the laughs. I guess it goes to the heart of human nature. Good people are not entertaining. Greed, lust and other sins are inherently entertaining, even sympathetic. Hence the attraction of Walter Matthau. It is one of the quiet triumphs of The Apartment that Lemmon and McLaine manage to make goodness so gently and attractively comic in contrast to the harsh, vaudeville of Kirkeby, Dobisch, the switchboard operator, et al. In counterpoint to all this, is a wonderful chorus of "old country" Jewish common-sense and decency, represented by Lemmon's next-door neighbours Dr and Mrs Dreyfuss. They urge Lemmon to be a "mensch ("you know what that means? a human being") in opposition to the cynical values of corporate America. And the film offers one of the best closing lines in any movie, ever ("Miss Kubelick I absolutely adore you." "Shut up and deal!"). Chokes me up every time. An odd, 1970s companion piece to The Apartment is the sweetly insane Can She Bake A Cherry Pie starring the weirdly attractive Karen Black (Fran Kubelick after a nervous breakdown?). It is another comedy about lonely misfits finding love in New York City. It was memorably described by Time Out as the "damn nicest film since Astaire stopped dancing".
Rating:
Summary: A great human story
Review: I am not a Jack Lemmon fan. His eternal "shnookness" is like nails on the blackboard to me. I am not a Shirley MacLaine fan. Her whimsical charm usually goes over my head, and is interpreted more often than not as flakiness (an unspeakable crime). That being said, I loved them both in this movie. Jack's shnookness works beautifully here. He is a loser; that is apparent. But he is not only a loser. He is actually quite human. He's a very lonely man who has an enormous romanticism about him, but also a streak of the capitalistic swine too. He knows what he is doing all along (even though he protests that the situation is beyond his control, don't believe it), and yet he is willing to get punched in the eye over a situation that is not entirely his fault. This is what makes him human in my eyes: an equal mix of good and evil, where the good and evil aren't necessarily absolutes. Shirley MacLaine's charm here is that she is... well... charming. The key for me in any romantic comedy (and I know that this is more than a romantic comedy, but the term serves my purposes here) is that I have to - along with the male lead - fall in love with the woman too. And I did. Miss Kubelik is witty and adorable, and obviously quite vulnerable. And she is human too. Even with all her brains and street smarts, she still manages to get hooked by a married man. And hurt, too. I can easily see why a (self-proclaimed) upstanding man like Baxter would fall in love with her, warts and all. He so wants to be her knight in shining army that it hurts. For a movie that contains so many dark moments (adultery, drunkenness, an attempted suicide, and, worst of all, insurance), it is a surprisingly uplifting movie. What would happen if two fundamentally flawed people, caught up in a situation that is larger and than both of them and quite destructive, fell in love? Could they overcome? I certainly hope so. "Shut up and deal," she says. And all is forgiven.
Rating:
Summary: A Billy Wilder Classic
Review: This is one of the greatest comedy-dramas of all time. Jack Lemmon and Shirley McLain have a wonderful chemistry throughout the film, and they give realistic performances. The storyline involves many poignant, heartfelt moments. In this film, Wilder achieves an expert balance between the comedic elements of his earlier films (such as "The Major and the Minor," and his screenplay for "Ninotcka") with the heavier characteristics of his noir films (notably "Double Indemnity"). The result is a polished piece that alternately breaks your heart and makes you laugh. The film also features Fred MacMurray as a cad, going against his normal typecasting. With this cast, this director, and this screenplay, the film is a must-see.
Rating:
Summary: Shut Up and Watch
Review: I usually get dragged into Shirley MacLaine movies kicking and screaming; that supposedly elfin charm of hers usually eludes me. Because of this, I neglected to watch "The Apartment" for years. All I can say about that now is, "Pardon me, Shirl, my mistake." This movie is a Wilder masterpiece and an absolute delight. One of the best things about it is that it shouldn't be funny; nearly everyone in it is a lying, abusive, double-crossing lecher with a heart of solid tin. There's adultery, alcoholism, and a suicide attempt, too. None of this would be remotely funny in lesser hands than Wilder's, let alone heart-warming, but the director manages this impossible feat handily. It helps that the central character, C.C. Baxter, is brought to life by Jack Lemmon; Lemmon's performance is one of the rare times in film you forget you're watching a star and genuinely believe in the character. Fred McMurray plays against type- amazingly well- as the slimy boss C.C. Baxter must please. Shirley MacLaine is, for once, the heartbreaking gamine she's cracked up to be. The supporting cast is terrific- Jack Kruschen is great as C.C. Baxter's next-door neighbor, a doctor. Joan Shawlee is her usual howlingly funny self as a floozy telephone operator, and Edie Adams gives herself over completely to an unsparing portrait of a scheming secretary. For my money, the best bit in the film is when C.C. Baxter, who has a cold, has been summoned to the boss' office for a talk that takes a VERY surprising turn. The sniffling, sneezing Baxter forgets he's holding his nose spray, and reflexively squeezes a six-foot stream of the stuff across the office. The film is richly detailled, with sets that blend seamlessly with the real New York City locations used. I spotted one inside joke in the movie- C.C. Baxter gets his first real promotion and, therefore, his first real office at the company. Of course, Baxter's name is on his door; the door of the next office says that T.W. Plews is the occupant. The name is actually that of Tom "Limey" Plews, prop master for this movie and hundreds more. This is one of the greats, and I can guarantee you won't be disappointed. There is one glitch in the video transfer you should know about; the original theatrical trailer is included on it, and the print of the trailer is absolutely terrible. Fortunately, the film itself is just fine. BUY this one, don't rent it- you'll want to see it again and again!
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