What makes it different from others?

Redundant and unnecessary.

Am I Missing Something?

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

I sat down to watch this film because of the three wonderful actresses in the cast - Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Harris and Lee Grant - and I've never been disappointed by Arthur Hiller. I've been slow to warm to Neil Simon, but "The Sunshine Boys" had me in stitches. I mention this to indicate that I had reasonable expectations for this movie.Now I have to be honest and admit that I could only watch one segment, it left such a nasty taste in my mouth. In it, Neil Simon presents us with a marriage that has turned sour and seems to have lost any reason for continuing. Trouble is, the pair just aren't sympathetic or particularly interesting. Never mind the husband (Walter Matthau), Maureen Stapleton as his wife drove ME crazy! Arriving, it seems, right off the set of "Bye Bye Birdie", she prowls the hotel suite, nattering incessantly and hopping from place to place like a sparrow on speed, with that irksome camera constantly pursuing her. I don't wish to sound impatient or cruel. I know she plays a doormat begging for crumbs of respect, and I know that whatever happens (past the final fade-out) she'll get the short end of the stick, and I did feel sorry for her, but her neediness and whining were irritating. As for the husband, he's a heel, plain and simple. The story provides no surprising or interesting revelations. At the end, having sat through the entire segment, I wanted to know the outcome. No such luck. Instead, there's an unmerited and annoying void between the moment when the husband strides out of the suite in the evening to meet with his "secretary" and the wife hops out of the hotel in the morning.When the second segment started - "Just one drink," insists one of the characters (a warning to me that there would be many more) - and the creepy new Matthau persona loomed and it looked as if I was going to be stuck in that same hideous suite, with its puke green and yellow palette, for another forty minutes, I turned the movie off, and breathed a sigh of relief.

This movie features Walter Matthau in three separate roles but the real stars are the women he performs with: Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Harris and Lee Grant. In each case, we see them in the roles of wife, girlfriend and mother. Maureen Stapleton's role was sad and the other two--Harris and Grant-- are comical. I found the roles of these women were more interesting and the acting more convincing than Walter Matthau. I am a fan of Walter Matthau but in this film he gives a lacklustre performance with limited material in the first story and overblown performances in the other two. Matthau is usually a very funny guy with great lines and superb delivery but the humour just isn't there and the lines fall flat. All three stories deal with marriage and relationships at various stages of life. The common thread is that they take place in the same suite at New York City's Plaza Hotel, a Neil Simon touch.

Not very funny or interesting. All three of the skits are pretty boring. I could hardly keep myself awake during the second one, I only watched the third one because i heard it was the best of the three, It was just as bad as the first two. Walter Matthau is a fine actor but not in here.

I couldn't relate to that other review at all. We're talking about a seriously entertaining film here, I'm not sure exactly what was boring about it. The hilarity was pretty much non-stop, all the roles were delightfully impeccable, and I doubt that the writing could be flawed at all. I can see how the recommendation below points towards "The Royal Tenenbaums" too, obviously the comedy here-in takes a certain understanding to fully sink in. Not to mention the brilliant poignancy it leaves behind."Boring"... feh. That's someone who needs a good hard drink.