Odd Couple (1968)

"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.

	John Fiedler
	Carole Shelley
	Herb Edelman
	Jack Lemmon
	Walter Matthau
	Iris Adrian
	Monica Evans
	David Sheiner
	Frank Bracht - Editor
	Howard W. Koch - Producer
	Neal Hefti - Composer
	Neil Simon - Screenwriter
	Walter Tyler - Art Director
	Hal Pereira - Art Director
	Robert B. Hauser - Cinematographer
	Gene Saks - Director

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?... 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