SimonJack
Obviously, tastes differ on films like this. A few reviewers like "Buddy Buddy," but others don't think much of it. Even those who enjoyed it didn't score it very high. The fact that so few people have commented out of the number who have rated it probably says as much. I think it's a dud for several reasons. First, it's not very funny. A couple of chuckles are the most I could manage. The plot idea is OK, but the screenplay with so many goofy aspects (the psycho-love palace, etc.) is way overboard. There is very little witty or clever writing for a Billy Wilder vehicle.Then there's the complaining persona of Jack Lemmon's character, Victor. I know there's a movie following that thinks "The Out of Towners" of 1970 was a very good movie. I can't seem to appreciate movies like that and this one that have nagging, whining characters who carry on throughout much of the film. I just don't see the humor in that. If it were a single short scene or two, perhaps. But that type of film soon wears very thin on me.I wonder if Wilder and/or MGM had their heads on, if not their hearts in this film. The stereotyped stupid cops and murderous use of clichés make it seem like they just wanted to toss something together and get done with it. Another reviewer noted the tedious repeats of Walter Matthau's Trabucco. He opens his suitcase, takes out and sets up his assassin's rifle, scope and tripod, and then takes them apart and puts them back in the case. Not once, but several times. Who, unaffected by mind-altering substances, would think that was funny, or interesting? Someone obviously thought it must be good, because it repeats so often. Well, that must answer my question, indirectly.On top of all this, the screenplay is quite crude and crass. I wanted to laugh, because the idea for the story had real possibilities. It just falls flat. My four stars are solely for a fine cast of wonderful entertainers who probably gave it a good shot, considering the rotten egg they were handed. That includes Paula Prentiss, Klaus Kinski, and others besides the leads.I'm a viewer who thinks this film is as bad as one may have heard.
moonspinner55
Jack Lemmon does some very funny over-playing as a suicidal man in a southern California hotel who makes friends with his neighbor, a grouchy hit-man on the verge of retiring after one last job, but the picture is botch. American remake of the 1973 French-Italian black comedy "L'emmerdeu" ("A Pain in the Ass") re-teams Lemmon and co-star Walter Matthau with director and co-writer Billy Wilder, but results aren't even sporadically funny. Wilder's witless script (with writing pal I.A.L. Diamond) is a wet noodle: there's no snap, just caustic flapping and nagging. This is also one of worst-looking major studio films of the 1980s, with lemon meringue color and cheap process shots. Matthau, constantly opening-closing-and-reopening his suitcase, looks terrible throughout; with his hair dyed too black and the color of his skin a sickly white pallor, he resembles a waxwork figure. Lemmon sticks close to his proved formula--his nervous/neurotic Lemmon-isms--and survives the morass, but everyone else in the cast has been prodded to play these gross jokes to the hilt. It's a pushy, ugly piece of work. *1/2 from ****
Edgar Soberon Torchia
We all watch films for different reasons. In 1981, it was a new film by film great Billy Wilder with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau after 1974's "The Front Page". But for me it was a new occasion to see the elusive Paula Prentiss on the big screen. She returned to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio where she made her first motion pictures, under different conditions, for the studio had been sold in the 1970s. An adaptation of Francis Veber's play "L'emmerdeur", previously made in France by Edouard Molinaro, the resulting screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is as offensive as a sexist joke, but that's no news in Wilder's movies. The film has a fast pace and funny moments, mostly sustained on the verbal interplay between Lemmon and Matthau as two misogynists typical of Wilder's cinema. Prentiss plays Celia Clooney, a TV reporter who has abandoned husband Lemmon for Klaus Kinski, a sexologist who runs a clinic to improve people's sexual life. Lemmon goes after Celia, but he gets into trouble and gun-play when he meets Trabucco, a hit man (Matthau). All men in this film are so dumb that it seems almost logical that by the film's end Celia has run away with another woman (the receptionist at Kinski's clinic, played by Wilder regular Joan Shawlee). After the indifferent reception to what was to be Wilder's last film and joke on male sexual fantasies, Prentiss retired from films.
Petri Pelkonen
Jack Lemmon is Victor Clooney, a man who wants to commit a suicide and Walter Matthau is a hitman called Trabucco.When these two run into each other in the same hotel it can only mean lots of funny moments.Buddy Buddy from 1981 is an excellent Billy Wilder comedy.Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau are amazing together and they always were.Unfortunately Mr Lemmon passed away last week on June 27 on cancer.He was 76 years old.That made me and many other Jack Lemmon fans very sad.Walter Matthau died last year.We never get to see this great comedy couple together again. But you can always watch their great movies on TV.This movie is a must see for every Matthau and Lemmon fan.There isn't a dull moment in this movie.Don't miss it.
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