Stars: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, John Fiedler, Herb Edelman, Larry Haines, Iris Adrian

Director: Gene Saks

Summary: A news writer moves in with his sports presenter friend after divorce and starts picking fault. They are soon at loggerheads.

After being thrown out of his home and marriage, fastidious Felix (Jack Lemmon) decides the only thing for him to do is to move in with his best friend, Oscar (Walter Matthau), a divorced man living alone in an Upper Eastside New York City 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 without killing each other

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Neil Simon's classic stage comedy made an effortless transition to the big screen in 1967, when The Odd Coupleprovided Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau with a tailor-made mid-career affirmation of their status as two of cinema's greatest funny men. Lemmon is Felix, manically obsessed with cleanliness and housekeeping, struggling to understand why his wife wants a divorce. Matthau is Oscar, his slovenly poker-playing buddy who invites him to take the spare room and lives to regret it as they rapidly and comically come to grief like an old, totally incompatible, married couple, revealing exactly why their respective wives have had enough. "I don't think two single men living alone in a big eight-room apartment should have a cleaner house than my mother", Matthau wails, trying to make sense of the disintegrating situation.

The pair devour Simon's typically sharp and witty script in a frenzy of classic one-liners that allow Lemmon's trademark twitchy neurosis and Matthau's baleful cussedness to flourish. Great as they are, though, they are nearly eclipsed in the funniest scene of the film by Monica Evans and Carole Shelly as a couple of British expatriate sisters from the apartment upstairs. Carry Oninnuendo briefly meets Manhattan repartee and the screen crackles with brilliance. It's a comic masterclass.

On the DVD:The Odd Coupleon disc has no extras apart from the original cinema trailer, but the film, presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, is pristine, Neal Hefti's score providing that instantly identifiable flavour of sophisticated 1960s American comedy. --Piers Ford

Aspect Ratio:	2.35 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Theatrical Trailer
Subtitles:	Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
Year:	1967
Release Date:	September 2, 2002
Runtime:	101 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P H E 8179
Keywords:	Comedy, General, Neil, Odd, Couple, Simon's
Genre:	Comedy