| | | ...Say No More.
Features: DVD, Widescreen, Dolby, English, Dolby Digital (5.1), Dolby Surround Sound
Neil Simon has a special genius for finding the great hilarity in ordinary people doing everyday things. Like two divorced men who decide to share a New York apartment. That's the premise of The Odd Couple, though there's nothing odd in the casting of two Oscar-winning talents like Jack Lemmon and Walter Mathau. The two veteran funnymen work together with the precision timing of a vaudeville team, but always with bright spontaneity. Lemmon plays fussy Felix, fastidious to a fault. He proves that cleanliness is next to insanity. Matthau is Oscar, who wreaks havoc on a tidy room with the speed and thoroughness of a tornado. An enduring and endearing picture, with the intelligence one usually misses in comedies.
"The only successful adaptation of a Neil Simon play." Channel 4 Film
"...a good play, easily Simon's best, and Matthau and Lemmon inhabit it with grace and style." Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
"It's still the original movie that best captures the essence of the characters and story." John J. Puccio, DVD Town
"Lemmon and Mathau's finest hour." Kim Newman, Empire Magazine
"Truly classic comedy in Neil Simon school with superb Lemmon and Matthau." Steve Crum, Video-Reviewmaster.com
Editor's Note
Neil Simon's play comes to the screen as divorcees Felix and Oscar move in together when their marriages break up. They soon discover their personalities and housekeeping rules are explosively incompatible. Academy Award Nominations: 2, including Best (Adapted) Screenplay, Best Film Editing.
Plot Summary
After being thrown out of his home and marriage, fastidious Felix decides the only thing for him to do is to move in with his best friend, Oscar Madison, a divorced man living alone in an upper eastside apartment. Oscar is a total slob, with week old sandwiches under his pillows, while Felix is a compulsive cleaner, constantly vacuuming, dusting and polishing. The question is: Can these men live together with out killing each other?...
| Features | Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, Dolby Digital Mono | | Audio: French Dolby Digital Mono | | Dubbed: French | | Interactive Menus | | Original Theatrical Trailer | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English |
| Entertainment Reviews
 | The Odd Couple - DVD Review By: Bill Gibron - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 3/13/2009 5:38 PM | |
There was a time, a little less than four decades ago, when Neil Simon was the literary benchmark of both Broadway and the Silver Screen. After a successful stint as a TV scribe on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, the soon to be phenomenon went on to create such Great White Way staples as Barefoot in the Park, Sweet Charity, Plaza Suite, and The Prisoner of Second Avenue. In 1966, he had four shows running at once and it wasn't long before Hollywood came calling. After adapting his Come Blow Your Horn and Park for the big screen, Simon was given the complicated task of translating his mega-hit The Odd Couple as a movie....read the full review |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Paramount |
| Release Date: 1/3/2006 |
| Running Time: 106 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1968 | | Catalog ID: 080264 | | UPC: 00097360802641 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English, French Dubbed | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Oscar (1969) | | | Frank Bracht, Nominee, Best Film Editing | |
Golden Globe (1969) | | | Jack Lemmon, Nominee, Best Motion Picture Actor - Musical/Comedy | |
Grammy (1969) | | | Neal Hefti, Nominee, Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture | |
Oscar (1969) | | | Neil Simon, Nominee, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium | |
Golden Globe (1969) | | | The Odd Couple, Nominee, Best Motion Picture - Musical/Comedy |
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| | Professional Reviews | Apollo Movie Guide 8 of 10
Neil Simon was long considered a God among playwrights of light American comedy. He wrote hit after hit for the Broadway stage, and many of them -- Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, The Out-of-Towners and Plaza Suite were at least modest successes as movies as well. Simon worked repeatedly with film directors he knew (including Gene Saks and Arthur Hiller), and actors that he knew (Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau and Herb Edelman among them). Simon's formula for light comedy worked well...As tastes changed, Simon's comedies didn't, so by the 1980s, he wasn't quite the success that he'd been a decade before. Although his name was still big, movies like I Ought to Be in Pictures and The Slugger's Wife showed that Simon was no longer an automatic success. Simon's gags were seeming old...But back in the late '60s, a Neil Simon comedy was on the cutting edge. And with The Odd Couple, Simon, director Gene Saks and actors Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau hit on something special. The wit was sharp, the direction sure-handed and the acting spot-on in this comedy about friends who become roommates despite the fact that they are opposites. Oscar Madison (Matthau) is a divorced sportswriter who lives in a comfortable Manhattan apartment much the way you'd expect your average college kid to live...His new roommate -- Felix Unger (Lemmon) has just been tossed out by his wife -- is precisely the opposite. He's an obsessive neat-nick for whom everything must be just-so...The Odd Couple works because the humour is quick and witty and because the delivery is bang-on. Lemmon and Matthau have a fabulous chemistry -- which is why they worked together on more than a dozen films (this was their second together) -- that allows them to interact with the believable love-hate of real friends. The repartee is often hilarious...Corny, not the least bit risque, but really good fun. - Brian Webster
Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
Two of the most unlucky words associated with the movies are "screen version." We get the screen version of every best seller, Broadway musical, famous battle and criminal career in sight. And too often, the concept of a "screen version" leads to critical nonsense. Movies are reviewed on the basis of how faithful they are to the "original," and a great many critics didn't like "Bonnie and Clyde" because it didn't follow the "facts"...This is a futile approach to film criticism. What matters is whether a movie is good and satisfying as a movie, not whether it is faithful to a novel, a play or some other art form..."The Odd Couple" has the same problem. This is indeed a "screen version" of Neil Simon's comedy: Most of the dialog is lifted intact from the play script, and even the sets and a great deal of Mike Nichols' original Broadway direction are used without significant change in the movie...This isn't to say "The Odd Couple" is unsuccessful as a movie...But the credit should go to Simon for writing the play, and to Nichols for his original direction; the material has not been whipped into cinematic shape...The performances are uniformly good, especially Herb Edelman as Murray the cop, and Monica Evans and Carole Shelley as the twittering Pigeon sisters from upstairs. Jack Lemmon is well cast as Felix, the fussy and suicidal news writer who separates from his wife. But Walter Matthau, for all of his natural charm, is not quite gruff and sloppy enough as Oscar, the role he created on Broadway. I retain a private preference for Oscar as splendidly played here in Chicago by Dan Dailey...What we have, anyway, is a funny "screen version" of a very funny (if not very significant) Broadway comedy. It does well as an evening's entertainment. But it begs the question of what might have resulted if Saks had flexed his muscles and insisted on a genuinely cinematic treatment. - Roger Ebert
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