What a waste of my time!!!

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

The good things about this film was the constant non stop excitement where Jack Lemon and wife Sandy Dennis get into one wacky crazy situation after another. It keeps you on your toes and was also often amusing, certainly interesting. Flying from Ohio to New York in 1970 for a big high paid promising job offer in the big city with all the perks. Their nonstop chain reaction of mishaps start and don't stop. First, their plane circles New York in landing traffic for two hours and then diverges to Boston. When they land in Boston, they lose their luggage. Then they barely make the train to New York. Then stand in line for the diner car on the train for two hours, then find that they've now almost entirely run out of food due to the excessive volume of people. Then arrive in New York to find out that there's a transit strike and have to walk to their hotel, and (what a surprise) it right then starts to rain. They also have to walk through tons of garbage due to there also being a garbage truck strike. When they get to the hotel, they find there's a "mix up" and their hotel room won't be ready for another day. They run into a "helpful man" who says he'll walk them down the road to another hotel that'll have a room immediately, and on the way, the man pulls out a gun and mugs them and takes Jack's wallet (of course nobody in modern times would ever fall for that "I'll show you to your hotel" bit in New York, but this was 1970 where the higher crime years in New York were just beginning. Just two years earlier in 1968 "The odd couple", Jack Lemon and Walter Matthou were sitting in Central park after dark not too afraid of anything happening, even though Walter after five minutes of relaxed sitting casually says "well, we better go, the muggers will be here soon". And 25 years earlier in 1945 "The clock", Judy Garland and Robert Walker were embracing in Central park at night in a very romantic scene with no signs in the world of any of the fears and dangers that would someday grow in that exact spot decades down the road).The crazy chain reaction of events just continue and continue, and honestly they probably could've taken a couple of bits out, I think they went overboard with the amount of mishaps just by a smidge. The one thing, however, that was a little irritating sometimes was a little bit too much panicked blabbering from both Jack and Sandy. I totally understand some panicked talk due to the intensity of how many endless mishaps they endured. But I feel Jack could've toned down the threatening to sue talk a bit. I mean I would've thought of suing a few of those people too, but he took it overboard and could've talked slightly quieter and maybe repeated it one less time every time he took down names and mentioned his attorney. As for Sandy, she was very pretty, but she had a slightly annoying way of saying too much aloud about what was happening when things were happening. One example was when the "I'll show you to the hotel" man pulled out his gun and mugged them, Sandy starts wailing out loud as he's mugging them "oh no! We're being mugged! Oh my God we're being mugged! I can't believe we are getting mugged now!". If someone did that as they were being mugged in a more modern movie or while being mugged in real life in more modern times, the mugger usually would've just shot them, or yelled "shut the **** up or I'll shoot!" Sandy does that a few different times in this film. And the repeating things a couple too many times from both Jack and Sandy, they do that a few different times in this film.But Jack and Sandy both have some nice quirky things about their characters too. And so many amusing events keep this film fun to watch. I also enjoyed the dog stealing their only food, a half eaten box of cracker Jacks. I liked the part where the manhole cover makes a bang and pops up right in front of Jack and he temporarily cannot hear. And when Sandy tries talking, it's funny when a few times Sandy speaks and Jack frustratingly cannot hear her. Like when Sandy says something like "I am going to see if I can find us something to eat", Jack says irritatingly "all I can hear you say is 'I..to...can..us..thing..eat'!". Also funny when Jack loses his filling and he can't speak without whistling. Then when they are not allowed to sit in church and pray because of some kind of filming going on, and Jack says "I've been denied in the past 24 hours a lot of things, but never until now have I been denied my divined rights!" Then as he's already said to numerous people already, "give me your name! I'm going to call my attorney!"

Sandy Dennis and Jack Lemmon play two mid-western Americans who come to the Big Apple when Lemmon has a job interview with a prestigious agency. It's not enough that their plane is re-routed to Boston because of a fog-in, but the train they're on has no food to sell them and once they do arrive in New York, their reservation at the Waldorf has been canceled. Con-artists rob them; A man in a cloak takes Lemmon's watch willingly without even demanding it; Spanish-speaking visitors to Central Park accuse Lemmon of being a child molester; They end up in the limousine of a foreign ambassador who is the victim of a protest; Lemmon chips his tooth on the prize in cracker jacks and just about goes deaf when an exploding man hole misses his head by an inch. So don't think you'll hear Dennis or Lemmon humming the wispy tune that plays over the opening credits. All they want to do is get out of Manhattan as fast as possible, and I don't mean to the Bronx or Staten Island too.This hysteria comes from the delightfully demented mind of the usual New York cheerleader Neil Simon who wrote about "Sweet Charity", gave us newlyweds prancing around "Barefoot in the Park", and lamented the life of a "Prisoner on 5th Avenue". Those were all Broadway shows that eventually ended up as films, and this film went straight to the screen without a stop where Seventh Avenue meets Broadway. This means you get a lot of great location footage of New York during the age of Aquarius and get to see visitors to one of the world's greatest tourist attractions being taken advantage of for being, as Roz Russell sang in "Wonderful Town" about her own people far from New York, "Babbity, Provincial!".Unlike the later Steve Martin remake (and his similar comedy "Planes, Trains and Automobiles"), Lemmon and Dennis simply accept things as they happen, her occasional "Oh my God!" being more like "Here we go again!" rather than "Can you believe this crap?" Yes, Lemmon may threaten to sue every cop, hotel manager or bus driver who gives him a hard time, but its out of sudden frustration, and it is identifiable for any naive tourist or business visitor who had to get a bit tough when the city around them started moving faster than they could keep up with. New Yorkers, as kind as they can be to tourists and business visitors, on occasion like to see the darker side of what its like for outsiders to come to the city, and the results are hysterically funny. It may not be funny as you go through the situations that Dennis and Lemmon go through, but you can tell that in 30 years, their characters would go down memory lane and laugh when the other one said to them, "Remember when..."

The real fascinating thing about cinema,is that no matter how many movies you might have seen,there are always going to be films that you have missed and are great ,to say the least.This is the case with the "Out of Towners". I saw a few years ago the remake with Steve Martin and as a big fan of Steve's i liked the film.Actually i didn't know back then ,that there was an original with Jack Lemmon.Anyway i have bought the DVD and just put it in a box to watch it sometime. I never thought, that this was an absolutely hilarious comedy ,with Jack Lemmon, for me ,being even better than "the odd couple". His character is similar to the one he played alongside Matthau ,but we are talking about an amazing performance here.I'm really surprised that he wasn't even nominated for an Oscar(he was nominated though for a Golden Globe). A couple (Sandy Dennis plays the wife)starts a journey to N.Y ,because Lemmon has planned an interview for his new job.He has a strict schedule that includes dinner at the "4 Seasons" restaurant and spending the night with his wife at his luxury hotel. I really can't describe what's happening after the boarding on the plane.EVERYTHING THAT COULD GO WRONG WENT WRONG. But the real magic of the film is that at no point in the film ,you can accuse the writers that they overdid it with the story.And Lemmon has a big part to do with that, because he plays amazingly. Sandy Dennis also plays her part extremely well and has a fine chemistry with Lemmon. A classic in my collection ,with out a doubt in the top-5 of all the comedies i have ever watched. Watch it and enjoy yourselves.

I guess I'll never get Neil Simon. I know he's received a lot of awards and accolades, but almost none of his works do anything for me, with the notable exception of "The Lonely Guy," but that screenplay was based on Bruce Jay Friedman's material, not Simon's own. Some become great, but only after they've been reshaped by others, like the classic "Odd Couple" series starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman.This movie is average Simon. Yes, I know it's supposed to be a comedy about how a night in New York becomes hell for a married couple. But the problem is there is absolutely nothing likable about this couple. George is a blowhard who's always taking down names and threatening to sue when he doesn't get his way. The hotel gave away his room because he didn't show up or call before 10 p.m. as the terms of his reservation stated? He'll sue! An airline rep tells him that they can't send his luggage because JFK Airport is still fogged in? He'll sue! What do you want, George, that they charter a plane and parachute your bags to you? But if George is obnoxious, his wife Gwen is like fingernails on chalkboard. I could die happy if I never hear "Oh, my Goooood" in her nasal whine again. She is so dumb that you wonder why George or any man would stay with her. She gives away his wallet and watch for absolutely no reason. If I was from Ohio, I'd be offended at how stupid these characters make Ohioans look. I think this would be a fine, funny comedy if it was about bad things happening to good people, but it's actually a film about bad things happening to stupid people mostly through their own fault. The vast majority of their problems are caused by George's pigheadedness, from refusing to eat on the plane to refusing to get out of the police car.But this seems to be Simon's habit. His characters usually have no redeeming value. Lemmon & Matthau's "odd couple" in his movie wasn't likable. It took the aforementioned Randall and Klugman (plus good writers) to massage Felix and Oscar into people we could like and cheer on despite their foibles. (Which Simon managed to undo with his eminently forgettable Odd Couple II.) They could still be annoying at times, but you wouldn't find it inconceivable that they would have friends. On the other hand, I'd pay good money to get away from Gwen and George and was happy at the end when they decided to stay in Ohio. The only good thing about this movie is being able to see NYC as it was in 1969.