Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55601 in DVD
• Released on: 1998-10-21
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 97 minutes

Amazon.com
Mike Nichols directed the 1965 stage production of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, but while Nichols went on to become a vitally intelligent director of contemporary comedy, Simon's career thrived in the 1970s and '80s before dwindling towards sentimental fluff like this amusing but mildly disappointing sequel. Closer to Grumpy Old Men than the wry wit of Simon's original play and 1968 screen adaptation, the movie finds former roommates Oscar (Walter Matthau) and Felix (Jack Lemmon) reluctantly reuniting for the wedding of Oscar's son to Felix's daughter. When they get sidetracked in California, the road-movie formula unleashes the comedic chemistry of Lemmon and Matthau (which alone makes the movie worthwhile), but it's too casual to match the original's depth or dramatic foundation. Simon and Grumpy director Howard Deutch could have deepened the Oscar-Felix relationship to make it funnier and more emotionally involving, but instead they've played it safe with some good laughs in the kind of sketch comedy that Nichols would avoid. Simon's capable of much better than this, but Lemmon-Matthau fans will have a good time anyway. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Oscar and Felix are Back
Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, two comedy greats, pair up again in this hilarious film. In The Odd Couple II, it has been 17 years since Oscar and Felix last saw each other. They are reunited to go to their children's wedding. Along the way they get arrested three times, encounter two lovely ladies Thelma and Holly, and get on each other's nerves no end. After making such a hit as Odd Couple, making a sequel was risky business, but Walter and Jack pulled it off! Sadly it would be their last film together.

Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau have done it again!
Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau team up again in this teriffic comedy as the infamous Odd Couple.After being away from each other for seventeen years, Oscar Madison (Matthau) and Felix Unger (Lemmon)meet again,this time to travel to the wedding of Oscar's son and Felix's daughter. On the way they encounter tons of crazy characters and situations,after losing Felix's expensive suitcase-along with their map-and forgetting the name of the town they are driving to! This hilarious road trip is a great display of the famous team of Lemmon and Matthau

Oh, no...
What a disappointment. Watching Matthau and Lemmon struggle so hard to make this clanker enjoyable was nothing less than depressing. Part of the enjoyment of the first Odd Couple was the clash of personalities between Felix's anal retentive, obsessive/compulsion and Oscar's boorish impatience. This film hardly touches upon that struggle and, instead, becomes a watered-down version of one of the Grumpy Old Men movies. In fact, this movie seems like a compilation of other Neil Simon movies. When Felix and Oscar get lost in the Californian desert, it's "The Out of Towners", except in reverse. When Oscar's son gets cold feet on his wedding day and camps out on the roof, it's like "Plaza Suite."

Also the use of the F-word and of middle fingers just makes the movie seem all that much more desperate for laughs. Lastly, the Florida/California milieu is just inappropriate for these two neurotic but iconic New Yorkers.