some things are classic, some things are just old

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author. Your results may vary.

I love old movies. Of course, I have my favorites — those that I have watched over and over again. I think its funny when watching an old movie — one that I have seen dozens of times — and I catch myself staring as though its the first time I have ever seen it. That is a true sign of how much I like a particular movie. 

Cable network TCM shows old movies and they have some in their vast library that they broadcast way more than others. Among them, there are some that — surprisingly — I have never seen. Each August, TCM highlights a different actor and shows a collection of their movies for an entire day. The selections are a mixed bag of popular and well-known titles from the performer's resume, along with some lesser films in which the actor was featured in a tiny role. This past Friday spotlighted the versatile Jack Lemmon. Along with fan (and TCM) favorites like The Fortune Cookie, The Apartment, Days of Wine and Roses and the all-time TCM staple Some Like It Hot (a movie that I will sheepishly admit I do not like), the 8 o'clock time slot was filled with the 1970 Neil Simon comedy The Out-of-Towners — which I have never seen. So, with nothing else to my liking on any of the other seven zillion channels offered by my cable provider, I watched.

Host Ben Mankiewicz introduced the film with a proper build-up, citing Neil Simon's comedic prowess, Jack Lemmon's adeptness at playing the "frustrated everyman" and a host of supporting actors in small roles long before they became notable figures in their own right. I was sold. A quick scan of the movie's IMDB page told me to be on the lookout for the likes of Billy Dee Williams, Anne Meara, Richard Libertini, Ron Carey, Robert Walden, Graham Jarvis, Anne Prentiss, Dolph Sweet, Phil Bruns, Johnny Brown and Paul Dooley. (These folks went on to lucrative careers as in-demand character actors and their names are very meaningful to those of us that fancy themselves aficionados in Hollywood trivia.) Jack Lemmon's co-star for this 101 minute ride was Oscar-winner Sandy Dennis, an actress who I never quite got. Nevertheless, under the capable direction of Arthur Hiller, a one-time television director who went on to helm The In-Laws, Plaza Suite and several collaborations with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, I figured I'd be in for some great laughs.

I wasn't.

Considering The Out-of-Towners was lauded as a comedy, I didn't laugh once. I have seen plenty of "the nightmare that doesn't end" movies... and there have been a lot. Films like Martin Scorsese's After Hours, Adventures in Babysitting, Being John Malkovich (I'm sure there are others), where the main character is trapped in a seemingly never-ending circumstances where things just keep getting increasingly worse. Nothing goes right. Everything  goes wrong and there is no relief in sight. Except in those movies, the situations were just ridiculously implausible and outrageous. In After Hours, Griffin Dunne's beleaguered "Paul Hackett" encountered a succession of surreal characters who live exclusively in a nocturnal New York City. They were cartoonish and weird for the sake of being weird. In Adventures in Babysitting, Elisabeth Shue and her brood suffer a flat tire that - though a series of preposterous events — escalates into a run-in with organized crime and eventually Thor, the god of thunder.

In The Out-of-Towners, Lemmon and Dennis just fall hapless victims to a long-running series of bad luck... sometimes as a result of Lemmon's own arrogance. Nothing really outrageous or comically bizarre. Just plain bad luck. The story starts with Ohio suburbanites The Kellermans (Lemmon and Dennis) leaving their little provincial cocoon to fly to big bad New York City so Mr. Kellerman can apply for a prestigious corporate position. The interview is to take place at 9 AM sharp the next morning, so the Kellermans wisely plan to arrive the night before, have a lovely, leisurely dinner at an expensive restaurant, retire to a pre-arranged suite at the illustrious Waldorf Astoria, awaken to breakfast in bed, after which Mr. Kellerman — properly refreshed — will make his interview on the dot of 9 and "wow" his prospective new employers. This is hardly the script for a comedy, but, in the hands of comedy master Neil Simon, it had the potential of being uproarious. 

It was not.

The Kellermans (especially Jack Lemmon's over-zealous "George") can't seem to get out of their own way. He has an angry chip on his shoulder and spends the entire movie scribbling the names of everyone who has wronged him on an ever-growing list that he threatens to present to his attorney for promised lawsuits. However, the hardships that the Kellermans experience are totally plausible. There's bad weather that forced their flight to be diverted. There's confusion as to which train to board (Kellerman's fault). The dining car on the train runs out of food. It begins to rain as they walk to the hotel. New York is in the middle of a cab strike, a sanitation strike and a subway strike. The hotel doesn't hold their reservation. They get robbed. (again, Kellerman's fault). The bad luck just goes on and on and on. It's not funny. It's frustrating, irritating and infuriating, but not funny. Jack Lemmon is annoying. He is irrational, relentless and — at the same time — wishy-washy. He is curt with those trying to help him and especially snippy with his loyal wife. After a while, I just wanted someone to push him into the East River. The more understandably irate he became, the more unfunny the movie became.

As the story grew to a sentimental close, it took an abrupt turn and fell back into frustration for an unsatisfying and perfectly lazy ending.

In its initial release, The Out-of-Towners was outperformed at the box office by Beneath the Planet of the Apes. It received fair reviews and was remade almost twenty years later with Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn in a story slightly adjusted for the times.

The highlight of the movie was the parade of supporting actors, all showing the germination of bigger and better roles to come. However, those are 101 minutes I could have spent elsewhere.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com