Buddy, Buddy *** (1981, Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon) – Classic Movie Review 1457

Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon’s fifth movie together and their last till Grumpy Old Men in 1993 is director Billy Wilder’s final film from 1981. Alas it wasn’t the hoped-for classic, and Wilder’s brilliant career ended with a whimper.

Though it was not well received critically or commercially, it is still an amusing American adaptation of Francis Veber’s French black comedy L’Emmerdeur (A Pain in the Ass), with Matthau as a grouchy professional hitman called Trabucco, who is about to kill gangster Rudy ‘Disco’ Gambola (Fil Formicola) before he testifies against the Mob. Lemmon plays the suicidally depressed Victor Clooney, hindering the Trabucco’s hit when he tries to hang himself because he’s distraught because his wife Celia (Paula Prentiss) has left him for Dr Hugo Zuckerbrot, the head of a weird Californian sex clinic.

Among Wilder’s best ever performers, the stars are reliably entertaining and, though the film falls way short of Wilder’s highest standards, it’s still agreeable and fairly funny. It’s written by the vintage screen-writing team of Wilder and his old partner I A L Diamond.

Not at all a funny man, the late Klaus Kinski is horribly miscast and embarrassing, though, as the deranged sex clinic therapist, and Prentiss struggles with some unfunnily tasteless material about the ultimate orgasm.

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