Buddy Buddy (1981) - Video Rental Chicken Fat

"You're making it very difficult for me to like you."

Director

Billy Wilder

Cast

Jack Lemmon - Victor Clooney

Walter Matthau - Trabucco

Paula Prentiss - Celia Clooney

Klaus Kinski - Dr. Hugo Zuckerbrot

If the movie The Private Eyes (1980), which I reviewed last month, is an obscure Don Knotts and Tim Conway movie, then the 1981 Billy Wilder film Buddy Buddy is the lost Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau film.
Again, back in the mid-video rental days of my life, I took an interest in exploring films made before I was born. One of those movies I loved, and still love, is the 1968 Neil Simon classic The Odd Couple. 

It not only introduced me to the real-life comedy style of Neil Simon and the movies based on his plays such as Barefoot in the Park, The Out-of-Towners and The Prisoner of Second Avenue, it introduced me to the collective comedic genius of Lemmon and Matthau.
Sometime back in the 1990s, I found a video cassette copy of Buddy Buddy on the rental shelf of California Video, the movie rental store I've mentioned on this blog before.
The only selling point for me was Lemmon and Matthau. So, I rented it. Not only did it broadened my experience in their comedy, it was also the first time I heard Matthau say "fuck" in a movie. 

After all this time, that's the only thing I remember most from this flick.
The day I rented Buddy Buddy was the first and last time I watched it.
After that, I never saw the movie again. I never found any copies of it on any movie shelf. I never saw it in any store where DVDs are sold. My local public library couldn't even find a copy through Interlibrary Loan because no library in my state has one. 
I searched the not-too-dark crevasses of the internets* for a copy. I inquired among folks in a Facebook page dedicated to "dead formats" to see if anyone was selling it. I checked Amazon and could only find a copy in Spanish. On eBay, VHS copies sell for nearly $50.

Finally, I found a DVD for sale at classicmoviesetc.com - a fantastic site for those looking for hard to find, or perhaps, out-of-print movies. (They're not a sponsor). 

Now, $13 later, I have Buddy Buddy in my hands for the first time since I rented it over 30 years ago.
This movie is a remake of the 1973 French film L'emmerdeur (A Pain in the Ass) which is based on the 1971 play Le Contrat by Francis Veber. 
Matthau plays a hitman named Trabucco who is carrying out a job eliminating witnesses against the mafia.
He's taken them all out. The last on his hitlist is Rudy "Disco" Gambola who's about to testify before a grand jury against other members of the mob.
To complete this last hit, Trabucco drives to Riverside, Calif., and checks into the Ramona Hotel across the street from the courthouse. His plan is to shoot Gambola from a room on that side of the Hotel, and sneak out. 
Meanwhile, Victor Clooney (Jack Lemmon), a television network censor, is suicidal as his wife Celia (Paula Prentiss) wants to divorce him for another man. 
Clooney checks into the same hotel, and ends up with a room right next to Trabucco's. The two of them happened to meet earlier at a gas station. Trabucco stopped to use the men's room, and while waiting, Clooney was occupying it, puking his guts out thanks to nerves. 
Their hotel rooms are connected. As Trabucco sets up a sniper rifle to shoot Gambola, he hears a commotion from Clooney's room. 

Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in Buddy Buddy.

He checks to see what happened and finds Clooney tried to hang himself on one of the shower pipes. This made the pipe break causing water to flood the bathroom. 
Trabucco tries to calm him down so as to avoid any unwanted attention from hotel staff. 

Clooney then climbs out of the window onto the ledge, threatening to jump. 
Scared that police might show up to the hotel, Trabucco talks him into coming back inside. 
He agrees to drive Clooney to see his wife who's a researcher at the "Institute of Sexual Fulfillment" clinic, gathering content for a 60 Minuies segment. The clinic is run by an expert of sexual behavior, Dr. Hugo Zuckerbrot (Klaus Kinski). Zuckerbrot is also the guy Celia is leaving Clooney for. 
On the way there, Trabucco tries to shoot Clooney, who needed to stop to puke again. But the attempt is interrupted when a cop car pulls up escorting another vehicle with a female passenger who's in labor. They ask Trabucco for help, and he reluctantly agrees to take the woman and her husband to the nearest clinic. 

That nearest clinic is the Institute of Sexual Fulfillment. Why not kill two birds with one stone? 

Trabucco drops Clooney off, and heads back to the hotel. 

Clooney is unsuccessful at trying to win Celia back. He tells her how suicidal he is. When Celia tells Zuckerbrot what state her husband is in, he worries what this'll mean for the reputation of the Institute. 

Clooney manages to find a way back to the hotel. 

Celia and Zuckerbrot drop in unexpectedly to give Clooney a heavy sedative so he won't take his own life. However, Zuckerbrot goes in alone, mistakes Trabucco for Clooney, and gives him the shot.

All this time, Clooney is unaware Trabucco is a mafia hitman. But he finally catches on. And once he figures it out, Trabucco can't just let him go. 

This comedy has the Neil Simon "what else can go wrong" comedy style similar to films like The Out-of-Towners, The Odd Couple, and The Prisoner of Second Avenue. 

It's the last film for Wilder, who came out of retirement to make this one last movie. Sadly, it was a "poof" to end his directing career.

While Buddy Buddy is not their best film together, and despite film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times calling it "appalling," "very bad," and "a comedy without laughs," I think time and nostalgia has worked in its favor just a bit. 

Matthau can be an intimidating presence on screen, and he is in this movie. But his faux Italian Bronx mafia style accent doesn't work. His normal Matthau voice would work so much better, especially when considering he was born in the Lower East Side of New York. A fake accent is completely superfluous and distracting.

Lemmon plays his usual, energetic comedic self who's excitable and unaware of what the audience is in on. 
It's fun to see Lemmon and Matthau work off each other as it always is. The overall scenario is original for them.

However, the character of Clooney definitely falls a little too much into the shadow of Lemmon's character Felix Ungar in The Odd Couple. Minus Felix's obsessive cleanliness, everything else seems similar - his nervousness, his repugnance to the sexual deviations at the clinic (I'm sure Felix would feel the same about that), and especially Clooney facing a divorce and wanting to kill himself over it. 
Despite the somewhat seemingly lackadaisical comedy and not-so-interesting flow of events, I still found myself laughing at Matthau and Lemmon, and entertained by their performances.  

Buddy Buddy performed poorly at the time of its release, even being called the worst movie of 1981 by Chicago Tribune film critic Gene Siskel. Though Ebert hated it, too, he picked Heaven's Gate as the worst film of that year.
Watching the late legends brings a little more appreciation to the movie that critics panned back in 1981. 

Otherwise, all the movie has going for it is Lemmon and Matthau. Everything else is completely forgettable and stale. Nothing else is funny except for them.

The camera work and lighting is certainly not impressive either, which is unfortunate considering this is a Billy Wilder film. His previous films are usually much more lively in their stories, camera work, and imaginative lighting. It's no surprise as Wilder and screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond  wrote the script in three months. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times back in 1981, Wilder called it a record for them.

"We just sat on it," Wilder said. "Just think. It could have been made and lost $7 million already."

They waited out an actors strike going on at the time. Once that was over, they waited for Lemmon and Matthau's respective schedules to allow both of  them time to appear in the picture. 

Despite its then poor performance, I find it odd how difficult the movie is to come by considering Billy Wilder was in the director's chair, and Lemmon and Matthau in the starring roles.  
Wilder launched these two as a team when he directed the 1966 romantic comedy Fortune Cookie. He also directed them in the 1974 comedy The Front Page, which is probably my second favorite Lemmon and Matthau comedy after The Odd Couple.

Jack Lemmon and Klaus Kinski.

Matthau does have a colorful vocabulary of profanity in The Front Page, but I saw that years after watching him in Buddy Buddy.
Wilder has worked with Lemmon without Matthau, too, quite a few times such as in Some Like it Hot (1959), The Apartment (1961), Irma la Douce (1963), and Avanti! (1972). 
After Buddy Buddy's box office failure, Lemmon and Matthau, the longest running comedy team spanning four decades, wouldn't team up again until 12-years later in the successful 1993 film Grumpy Old Men. After that they made a few more films together as a duo - Grumpier Old Men (1995), Out to Sea (1997), and The Odd Couple II (1998).

The latter was their last film appearance together. Also, those films much easier to find. 
So, why Buddy Buddy is so obscure is a question I have yet to find an answer to. 

I'd recommend the movie to any fan of Lemmon and Matthau, but good luck finding it. I won't be lending my copy out anytime soon.

I have to add that actor Michael Ensign plays a hotel manager in this movie. He played a hotel manager again three-years later in Ghostbusters. Being a Ghostbusters nerd, I couldn't let this review go without mentioning this fact somewhere in here.