Buddy Buddy

M-G-M. Director Billy Wilder; Producer Jay Weston; Screenplay Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond; Camera Harry Stradling Jr; Editor Argyle Nelson; Music Lalo Schifrin; Art Director Daniel A. Lomino

Jack Lemmon
Walter Matthau
Paula Prentiss
Klaus Kinski
Dana Elcar
Miles Chapin

The script, based on the [1973] French Jacques Brel-Lino Ventura starrer L'emmerdeur, directed by Edouard Molinaro and written by Francis Veber, is one of the rare Wilder projects not initiated by the director himself, and a certain lack of care and even thought permeate the effort, from script to casting to execution.

Abandoned by wife Paula Prentiss, Jack Lemmon is a nebbishy failure who checks into a Riverside hotel to end it all. In the next room is Walter Matthau, a stone-faced grouch and heartless hit man who's preparing to knock off a squealer.

The two men's paths quickly cross and, despite Matthau's claim that 'I'm nobody's friend,' he allows himself to become involved in Lemmon's plight, saving him from suicide attempts and actually driving him to the nearby sex clinic where Prentiss is attempting to achieve the ultimate orgasm under the guidance of oddball therapist Klaus Kinski.

Talented thesps Prentiss and Kinski bear the brunt of hopeless miscasting. Lalo Schifrin's dippy score sounds as if it were concocted in a few minutes for a sitcom pilot.

(Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1982. Running time: 96 MIN.

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