The Out-of-Towners

Rating:
Summary: Worth watching! Nice DVD transfer.
Review: I decided to buy this movie recently, and watched it.I have to say I agree with the editorial review in regards to Jack Lemmon's performance started running thin. I also must say that Sandy Dennis was great to watch, in my opinion she makes the movie enjoyable and fun! For a movie over thirty something years now, it looks very nice on the DVD transfer, which by the way is widescreen version. Have you ever had a bad vacation/trip where everything went wrong?? We can all probably relate, if so. Also Great to watch if you would like to see New York City thirty something years ago. A very cute movie and good for the whole family to watch. I personally love the ending of this movie!!! (No extra features on DVD) Enjoy !!

Rating:
Summary: Worth watching! Nice DVD transfer.
Review: I decided to buy this movie recently, and watched it.I have to say I agree with the editorial review in regards to Jack Lemmon's performance started running thin. I also must say that Sandy Dennis was great to watch, in my opinion she makes the movie enjoyable and fun! For a movie over thirty something years now, it looks very nice on the DVD transfer, which by the way is widescreen version. Have you ever had a bad vacation/trip where everything went wrong?? We can all probably relate, if so. Also Great to watch if you would like to see New York City thirty something years ago. A very cute movie and good for the whole family to watch. I personally love the ending of this movie!!! (No extra features on DVD) Enjoy !!

Rating:
Summary: Jack Lemmon in his most hilarious role!
Review: I don't think that the 1999 remake of this movie could ever hold a candle to the original. Each hilarious mishap is even funnier than the last, from George losing his teeth to chasing a dog for a piece of cracker jack! This movie is from a time when comedians were truly funny, without needing to add obscenities to their material in order to keep the audience in laughter.

Rating:
Summary: THE FILM I GREW UP WITH!
Review: I HAVE BEEN WATCHING THE 'OUT OF TOWNERS' FOR ALMOST TWENTY YEARS. THE FIRST TIME WAS ON A LOCAL FLORIDA STATION WHEN THEY AIRED IT AS PART OF THE LATE LATE SHOW (FOR THOSE OF US WHO REMEMBER). THE VERSION WAS VERY OLD AND GRAINY. I WILL ENJOY SEEING THIS FILM, ONE OF THE FIRST I EVER SAW, IN DVD FORMAT AND IN WIDESCREEN. FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE NOT SEEN THIS FILM I URGE YOU TO SEE IT. ESPECIALY THOSE OF YOU WHO LIVE IN NEW YORK. THE WHOLE FILM IS SHOT ON LOCATION THROUGHOUT NYC. SO YOU GET TO SEE HOW THINGS WERE THIRTY YEARS AGO. IT'S ONE OF THE BEST AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FILMS IN MY LIFE.

Rating:
Summary: The Original withstands the test of Time!!!!!!
Review: I loved the irritatingly funny odd-couple if you will, when I first saw this adaptation of Neil Simon's play when it first hit the big screen almost 30 years ago!!!!!! 'OH MY GOD' still echoes in my ears..........I was not that thrilled with the remake with Martin and Hawn this year, though both comedic actors are funny in their ownright.

Rating:
Summary: Warning: Never Visit New York!
Review: I loved this film! I very seldom disagree with one of Leonard Maltin's reviews. But I sure did on this one. He claims this movie is "excruciating". Well...yes, I think so too. Excruciatingly funny, that is! I think that Jack Lemmon is wonderfully "over the top" in this picture. His character (as far as I see it) is obviously written to be played way, way over the top! That's what makes it funny. Realistically, we have to know that all 64 (or so) crises and maladies that befall this poor midwestern couple could not ALL happen at once in a million years! So, therefore, I think the viewer must look upon Lemmon as more of a "caricature" than a "character" in this film. Most of this movie was filmed outdoors, and there's a nice "Big Apple" flavor here. Some of my favorite lines from "The Out-Of-Towners" ..... Lemmon (upon hearing his luggage didn't arrive): "Well you flew ME through the fog! How come you're now worried about two leather valises?!" .... Lemmon (after frisking little boy searching for funds): "...Explain to the police? What I was doing in the woods with a little boy...with my hands in his pockets?!? They'd give me twenty years!"

Rating:
Summary: Warning: Never Visit New York!
Review: I loved this film! I very seldom disagree with one of Leonard Maltin's reviews. But I sure did on this one. He claims this movie is "excruciating". Well...yes, I think so too. Excruciatingly funny, that is! I think that Jack Lemmon is wonderfully "over the top" in this picture. His character (as far as I see it) is obviously written to be played way, way over the top! That's what makes it funny. Realistically, we have to know that all 64 (or so) crises and maladies that befall this poor midwestern couple could not ALL happen at once in a million years! So, therefore, I think the viewer must look upon Lemmon as more of a "caricature" than a "character" in this film. Most of this movie was filmed outdoors, and there's a nice "Big Apple" flavor here. Some of my favorite lines from "The Out-Of-Towners" ..... Lemmon (upon hearing his luggage didn't arrive): "Well you flew ME through the fog! How come you're now worried about two leather valises?!" .... Lemmon (after frisking little boy searching for funds): "...Explain to the police? What I was doing in the woods with a little boy...with my hands in his pockets?!? They'd give me twenty years!"

Rating:
Summary: George and Gwen go to the big bad city of New York
Review: I met Sandy Dennis backstage at a play once and wanting to say something more than the usual remarks of admiration I told her that my father stayed up one night to watch "The Out-of-Towners," which was of some import because my father never stayed up to watch anything. She said her father liked that one too and I got an autograph in which she spelled by first name correctly.

This 1970 film, the original version of "The Out-of-Towners" for those who say the recent version that is part of Steve Martin's attempt to be in more remakes than any other living actor, is my favorite Neil Simon script, which is rather ironic when you consider that he is primarily a comic playwright. However this script takes the hapless couple of George (Jack Lemmon) and Gwen Kellerman (Dennis) from their home in Ohio to New York City, where he has a job interview. However, their plans for a nice dinner at the Four Seasons are dashed when the plan circles the airport for hours before being diverted to Boston. Instead of eating at one of the best restaurants in the world they end up with her eating peanut butter on white bread and him eating crackers and olives with no drinks. This actually ends up being the best thing that happens to George and Gwen the rest of that night, which involves a train ride to New York, no room at the inn, a garbage strike, a mugger, and being kidnapped while in the back of a police car. This is without even mentioning the lost eyelash, the broken heel, and the chipped tooth that resulted from a bad encounter with the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks.

Throughout it all, George and Gwen keep up a running dialogue as he gets angrier and take more names while she tries to be the voice of reason and attests that she can verify everything her husband says in his growing list of complaints against the city is true. Everybody always talks about Lemmon's comic partnership with Walter Matthau, but Dennis comes across as the more perfect foil. Eventually her pessimism is turned into paranoia as the city takes the out of town couple for everything they have and keeps on grinding them into the rain soaked streets where the garbage is piling up to the sky. Eventually the idea of being Vice President in a company that has something to do with plastics does not seem like a step up in the world if this is the world in which they have to live.

I am surprised that this movie is only 98 minutes long, but I suppose it is because of all those commercials with late night television and the way Simon keeps pouring one misery after another on George and Gwen that makes "The Out-of-Towners" seem a lot longer, but not in a bad way. The pacing is pretty brisk for a story about two people who have a hard time getting to where they are going, and there are a lot of patented Neil Simon one liners, most of which are true to character and context, although Dennis gets maximum mileage out of repeating the phrase "Oh my, God!" and getting big laughs.

Simon won the Writers Guild of America award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen for this script, which was originally going to be one segment of "Plaza Suite," which came out the next year. But freeing it from the setting of a hotel room or even a hotel, into the wider expanse of New York City and the surrounding environs was what made this black comedy really work. Keep your eye out for lots of familiar faces who were relatively unknowns when this film came out: Anne Meara, Graham Jarvis, Ron Carey, Robert Walden, Richard Libertini, Paul Dooley, and Billy Dee Williams. Final thought: If you want to see a film that takes the exact opposite approach to New York City then that would have to be Woody Allen's "Manhattan," which would come out at the end of this same decade.

Rating:
Summary: George and Gwen go to the big bad city of New York
Review: I met Sandy Dennis backstage at a play once and wanting to say something more than the usual remarks of admiration I told her that my father stayed up one night to watch "The Out-of-Towners," which was of some import because my father never stayed up to watch anything. She said her father liked that one too and I got an autograph in which she spelled by first name correctly.

This 1970 film, the original version of "The Out-of-Towners" for those who say the recent version that is part of Steve Martin's attempt to be in more remakes than any other living actor, is my favorite Neil Simon script, which is rather ironic when you consider that he is primarily a comic playwright. However this script takes the hapless couple of George (Jack Lemmon) and Gwen Kellerman (Dennis) from their home in Ohio to New York City, where he has a job interview. However, their plans for a nice dinner at the Four Seasons are dashed when the plan circles the airport for hours before being diverted to Boston. Instead of eating at one of the best restaurants in the world they end up with her eating peanut butter on white bread and him eating crackers and olives with no drinks. This actually ends up being the best thing that happens to George and Gwen the rest of that night, which involves a train ride to New York, no room at the inn, a garbage strike, a mugger, and being kidnapped while in the back of a police car. This is without even mentioning the lost eyelash, the broken heel, and the chipped tooth that resulted from a bad encounter with the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks.

Throughout it all, George and Gwen keep up a running dialogue as he gets angrier and take more names while she tries to be the voice of reason and attests that she can verify everything her husband says in his growing list of complaints against the city is true. Everybody always talks about Lemmon's comic partnership with Walter Matthau, but Dennis comes across as the more perfect foil. Eventually her pessimism is turned into paranoia as the city takes the out of town couple for everything they have and keeps on grinding them into the rain soaked streets where the garbage is piling up to the sky. Eventually the idea of being Vice President in a company that has something to do with plastics does not seem like a step up in the world if this is the world in which they have to live.

I am surprised that this movie is only 98 minutes long, but I suppose it is because of all those commercials with late night television and the way Simon keeps pouring one misery after another on George and Gwen that makes "The Out-of-Towners" seem a lot longer, but not in a bad way. The pacing is pretty brisk for a story about two people who have a hard time getting to where they are going, and there are a lot of patented Neil Simon one liners, most of which are true to character and context, although Dennis gets maximum mileage out of repeating the phrase "Oh my, God!" and getting big laughs.

Simon won the Writers Guild of America award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen for this script, which was originally going to be one segment of "Plaza Suite," which came out the next year. But freeing it from the setting of a hotel room or even a hotel, into the wider expanse of New York City and the surrounding environs was what made this black comedy really work. Keep your eye out for lots of familiar faces who were relatively unknowns when this film came out: Anne Meara, Graham Jarvis, Ron Carey, Robert Walden, Richard Libertini, Paul Dooley, and Billy Dee Williams. Final thought: If you want to see a film that takes the exact opposite approach to New York City then that would have to be Woody Allen's "Manhattan," which would come out at the end of this same decade.

Rating:
Summary: funny,rib tickling
Review: If you have ever had a vacation or an out of town trip go bad, you can surly relate to this and find the humor in what was probably a very nerve racking experience. Jack Lemmon makes me laugh at his reactions to all the things that can go wrong when they DO go wrong!!!!