Billy Wilder's famously unloved final film as a director - while Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and Avanti have their fans, and some speak up for The Front Page and Fedora, no one seems to like this one.
It's not very good - slow and lethargic.Walter Matthau seems to take forever to say his lines. Jack Lemmon is better; Paula Prentiss (in another misfire from a top director) and Klaus Kinski are quite good. The support cast is full of sparkly little support roles in best Wilder fashion - a chatty bellhop, lazy cop, hippie father of a baby - but they rarely seem to shine.
I couldn't put my finger on why this didn't work. The basic story is okay - it never seems real. Maybe it's too slowly paced for farce. I didn't believe it. Maybe Matthau was miscast when the role needed a straight action star. It just felt slow and long and... off.
I actually enjoyed some of Wilder's attempts to modernise - Matthau telling someone to f*ck off, the topless servant at the end, sex jokes. While Wilder would whine and whine about declining standards in new Hollywood I wish he'd had the guts to make a really bawdy comedy.
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