Instant Favorite.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Duplex stars Drew Barrymore and Ben Stiller. They play a couple that is moving into a new duplex, but it's about to become a living hell once they realize who their neighbor is. Their neighbor is an older woman who lives alone and she has to be one of the most annoying neighbors ever. The couple is practically driven to insanity because of all of her antics. The writing can be somewhat weak at times, it has some funny moments, but mostly that's thanks to the actors and their performances, not the script. I liked Drew Barrymore and Ben Stiller in the film, they gave good humorous performances and they worked well together, had pretty good on screen chemistry. Usually I'm not a big fan of Stiller, just because sometimes I think he can be more annoying that actually funny, and he does have those moments here, but it's not pervasive. I also loved Eileen Essel in the movie. What a fine performance! Just goes to show you that age has no bearing on whether you can still act or not. She nailed her character. Annoying as ever, but all done with a smile on her face. I loved the ending too, very clever, very very clever. 7/10 for Duplex.

Alex Rose (Ben Stiller) and Nancy Kendricks (Drew Barrymore) are looking for a place. They find a nice duplex in Brooklyn for a very reasonable price except Mrs. Connelly (Eileen Essell) is the rent control tenant upstairs. Kenneth (Harvey Fierstein) is the real estate agent. Officer Dan (Robert Wisdom) comes in to investigate when the couple keeps getting in trouble over the little old lady.Director Danny DeVito is pushing hard for this slapstick dark comedy. I find little of it funny. I really don't like this couple and I like the little old lady even less. The old lady is too fake and really annoying. It's a lot of fake niceties and passive aggressiveness. I don't like passive aggressive characters sometimes and I really dislike this one. As annoying as it is for the couple, it is more annoying to watch them being annoyed. The more annoying the annoying old lady gets annoying the annoying couple, the more annoyed I got about the annoying antics. I did like the reveal or maybe I like that it was over.

This geriatric variation of Home Alone, with more of a dash of The Ladykillers and an obscure French film called Tatie Danielle thrown in, is given a cartoonish presentation as the new owners of a Brooklyn duplex deal with the outwardly sweet upstairs tenant they can't evict. A series of juvenile visual gags are shot out like machine gun bullets, with the seemingly sweet old Irish doll tossing out insults at the couple with passive aggressive glee. Seemingly immortal, the old buzzard becomes the road-runner like target of the couple's coyote where you begin to hope that for once the coyotes will kill their target. This leaves the viewer with a slight guilt complex which reflects on the general mean-spiritedness of the script.Hysterically funny much of the time, this can't escape the fact that its laughs come from that part of the human soul that hates humanity. The young couple are in a no-win situation and the genuinely evil hag has them by the scrotum. The attempted murder sequences are sometimes uncomfortable to watch, even though the first part of the film makes you want to see them succeed. I would have liked to had a different leading man as I never have seen the appeal of Ben Stiller, but found no fault with Drew Barrymore, once again truly likable. As the old lady, Eileen Essell takes the role and runs with it, being alternately a combination of Old Mother Hubbard and the tenant of a gingerbread house. A perfect supporting cast (including raspy Harvey Fierstein as a shady real estate agent, Wallace Shawn as Barrymore's irascible boss and Swoozie Kurtz as Stiller's publisher) helps the surprising twists and turns which alternately hurt the stomach from laughing too much and the guilt which goes along with it.

This will be a short review, with a bit of criticism. A lot of the move is quite amusing, just the general struggle between " the old lady " and " the young couple " A lot of the comedy really is from how old people generally get one up on younger people, which is true enough.However, the main complaint I have is with their reaction toward the old lady, especially trying to kill her.. I've always been brought up with the idea that we are supposed to care for the elderly. Im currently looking after my Gran as she rapidly approaches 100. If I was to let the things she gets up to get to me... id be a mess by now. The way we should treat old people is the way we would like to be treated as we get older.... and i cant find that sort of thing amusing really... its just kind of sad.