Crappy film

Brilliant and touching

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Max Goldman (Walter Matthau) and John Gustafson (Jack Lemmon) are still combative while maintaining their truce. John is married to Ariel (Ann-Margret) now and his father (Burgess Meredith) is still spry. Everybody is chasing after the big fish Catfish Hunter. Meanwhile, their children Melanie (Daryl Hannah) and Jacob (Kevin Pollak) are planning to get married. Newcomer Maria Ragetti (Sophia Loren) arrives in Wabasha to buy the bait shop and turn it into an Italian restaurant. It's a continuation that's missing much of the fun. It is contrived. It's great to see these great actors working together but that's all I got out of it. I found very few laughs.

This film has some of the funniest lines and it's a great comedy. One would probably think, even I, thought that this would probably happen between two older men who fight about the obvious: women, fish and each other. Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon are a perfect pair. Even though it's a comedy, the romance in it is on the clean side. Nothing too distasteful and the comic relief is still included into the romance, which gives it a continuous comic flow. Even though there is a serious part of the film where John's father passes away, after that scene the film is back to the comic feel, which is nice because there's no dwelling on the sad/serious scene. Nonetheless, this movie is guaranteed to make you laugh hard.

Grumpier Old Men (1995) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Sequel to Grumpy Old Men have Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau returning with more fights and foul language. This time out Lemmon is still happily married but Matthau is on the move and takes a special interest in an Italian woman (Sophia Loren) who has just moved to town. I think the most remarkable thing about this film is how well Loren looked. Even at 61 she's still a head turner and her comic timing isn't too bad either. I'm sure this film was only made because the first one made money but it doesn't really matter as no one should take this too serious as it's just a silly comedy meant to make you laugh. There are plenty of nice laughs here but I don't think it's as good as the original. This certainly isn't in the league as The Odd Couple but we do get a pretty good throwback to that film here as there's a scene where Lemmon has to spend the night with Matthau but can't put up with his dirty house. Ann-Margret returns but is pretty much wasted as is Daryl Hannah and Kevin Pollak. The perverted Burgess Meredith is back and steals the scene every time he's in it. Both Matthau and Lemmon are naturally very good and they easily slip back into their roles. It's priceless watching the two men work together even when the material isn't as strong as one would hope. Lemmon gets a special notice here due to a very touching scene with Meredith. Another problem is the direction, which has one of those "made for TV" feels to it. In the end this film could have and should have been a lot better but the cast make it worth watching.

To make a good sequel requires a very delicate balancing act that few film-makers seem able to pull off. On the one hand, because it is a sequel, there has to be enough connection with the previous movie to give the viewer a sense of familiarity with what's happening. On the other hand, there has to be enough originality to the story to make the sequel worth watching. Unfortunately, "Grumpier Old Men" seems to fail the originality test. Having said that, this isn't a bad movie. Filled with a galaxy of old pros, it couldn't be. Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ann-Margret, Sophia Loren, Burgess Meredith – these actors know what they're doing and they know how to hold a movie together. They do that here. The performances are excellent, and the movie's worth watching just to see the teamwork among them. It's in the story where things fall down.You can only watch a couple of old men insult each other for so long before it becomes tiresome. John (Lemmon) and Max (Matthau) already spent the entire first movie doing that. "Grumpy Old Men" was a very funny movie, but listening to them call each other "Putz" and "Moron" has lost its appeal, quite frankly. Like the previous movie, the men of Wabasha are fixated on fishing, and they're still intent on catching "Catfish Hunter" – a giant catfish who lives in the lake. Like the original, a beautiful woman (Loren) shows up in town and distracts everyone from the fishing business at hand. It all seems too familiar. Then, where there does seem to be promising originality, it ends up not being sufficiently developed.I thought that the budding romance between John's dad (Meredith) and Maria's mother (Ann Guilbert) had comedic potential, but the two ended up only having 2 or 3 scenes together, and the "stop the restaurant" campaign could have been (and seemed for a moment as if it was going to be) the comedic centrepoint of the movie, but in the end, all we got was about 10 minutes of what were essentially vignettes of the various things John and Max tried to do to stop Maria. The romance between Max and Maria was not as interesting as the competition for Ariel (Ann-Margret) in the first movie, because there wasn't any competition for Max, and the other highlighted story was the romance between Jacob (Kevin Pollak) and Melanie (Darryl Hannah), and, to be honest, I just didn't care much about them.I give the movie credit for the wedding twist at the end which I have to confess I didn't see coming, and the cast did a great job. Unfortunately they can only work with the story they're given, but on the strength of the good performances, I'll rate this as 6/10