the audience applauded

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.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

John Gustafson (Jack Lemmon) and Max Goldman (Walter Matthau) are lifelong rivals in Wabasha, Minnesota. Ariel Truax (Ann-Margret) is their new neighbor and a new source of rivalry. John is avoiding IRS agent Elliot Snyder (Buck Henry) and his final notice. The guys fought over a girl back in the day whom John later married. John has two children, Brian and Melanie. Brian was killed in Vietnam War. Melanie (Daryl Hannah), separated from husband Mike, has daughter Allie. Max's son Jacob (Kevin Pollak) is running for mayor. Chuck (Ossie Davis) runs the local fishing store. The two rivals and John's father (Burgess Meredith) spend their spare time ice fishing.Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau still have it. They continue to have great chemistry and they are fun together. Their characters' rivalry is actually a small problem because it keeps the guys apart. A movie with these men should use every means possible to keep them together on the screen for as long as possible. This may not be the greatest of comedies but it has a couple of laughs and a legendary duo.

Grumpy Old Men (1993): Dir: Donald Petrie / Cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ann-Margret, Ossie Davis, Burgess Meredith: Quirky comedy about how age and mentality catches up with oneself. Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau plays bickering neighbors whose rivalry goes back several decades. Lemmon is single and has a grown son but he conceals the reality that his house is about to be repossessed after thirty days. Matthau loves to fish and has a grown daughter where a romance is hinted between the two grown children. Central plot regards the arrival of a new neighbor, played with great spunk and energy by Ann- Margret. She arrives rolling about semi-nude in the snow at the bewilderment of our grumpy old men. Eventually she introduces herself to both but thankfully the screenplay avoids turning into a competition for her affections. Other roles are not so broad. Ossie Davis is featured as a shop owner who observes and provides advice when convenient. Burgess Meredith provides a laugh or two as Lemmon's obviously older than life father. Directed by Donald Petrie who previously made Mystic Pizza. It presents a theme of living life despite one's age but it also plays off the need to arrive at forgiveness and coming to the aid of those in need as oppose to cause further damage. In the end these two realize that under those grumpy expressions is a love and respect anxious to surface. Score: 9 ½ / 10

Tip of the cap to A, whoever idea this idea was. B, whoever green lit the project and C to whoever chose the principal cast. Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, Ann Margaret, Burgess Meredith, Ossie Davies, Daryl Hannah, Kevin Pollack and everyone's favourite douche Christopher McDonald are all superb!!Plot In A Paragraph: A long standing rivalry between two old neighbours (Matthau and Lemmon) intensifies when a beautiful woman (Margaret) moves across the road. Matthau and Lemmon are a delight. They are called John and Max but it does not matter as they could be playing Felix Unger and Oscar Maddison again. I love watching them on screen together. Ann Margaret still looks fantastic, Christopher McDonald is as unlikeable as ever, and it was good to see Daryl Hannah at her cute best (as the perfect girl next door) again whilst Burgess Meredith steals the entire movie (not easy when the cast is this good) as Lemmon's Dad.

You'd have to be hard-hearted in the extreme not to respond to this autumnal flowering of two mega talents. You're not so much watching Grumpy Old Men as watching The Fortune Cookie, The Odd Couple, The Front Page and remembering a great screen partnership and a great off-screen friendship. The story is really nothing at all but there's a great warmth radiating from the heart of this film set in a Minnesota winter and revolving around a lifelong love-hate relationship between two widowers who clearly have been through everything - childhood, dating, marriage, child-raising and loss of wives together. It may be unrealistic that love interest Ann Margaret, a good two decades younger than either, would not have a beau or even several beaux in her own age group or even if not would choose either one of these over-the-hill suitors but such is the charm and warmth we don't really care.