People are voting emotionally.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

It's not surprising to see some bad scores for this challenging little film. If you know nothing about it, be warned: this is one of the blackest 'comedies' you're ever going to encounter. But it's also one of Neil Simon's best works, cutting much deeper and sharper than simple little farces like The Odd Couple.Prisoner of Second Avenue tells the tale of a man coming totally unglued under the pressures of the modern world. Jack Lemmon plays a modern Job, suffering every trial a sadistic - but very up-to-date - God could imagine. Neil Simon brilliantly weaves in a gleam of underlying humor, which Lemmon brings out with his usual skill. But it's never more than a gleam; you have to be sensitive to it, or this film will seem like a dreary ordeal.In fact, far from being dreary, this is a remarkably joyous, uplifting film. It shows us that hope is always just inches away, if we can only see it. Our crushing problems are largely internal: what matters is how we meet them. Seeing that lesson, of course, is the challenge. Like the song says, when you've been down so long, it starts to look like up to you.Aside from its clever writing and fine performances, Prisoner of Second Avenue features some great New York ambiance, and a real feel for its time. This is a more personal, less-theatrical, less-contrived film than most of Simon's works.The Prisoner of Second Avenue is not just entertaining; it's therapeutic. Open yourself to the slightly masochistic pleasure of wallowing in it, and feel your own aches and neuroses burn away!

I'll admit from the off, I am slightly biased as I love Jack Lemmon, and Neil Simon seems to bring out the best in him The Prisoner Of Second Avenue is a lot of fun, I really enjoyed it. Plot In A Paragraph: Executive Mel Edison has a nervous breakdown when he suddenly finds himself unemployed. I'm a Jack Lemmon fan anyway, so I enjoy most things that he stars in, and I always enjoy seeing him on screen. It's also fun to see a young pre-Rocky Sly Stallone in another of his early roles. Sly only has the one scene (Available on YouTube) as he attempts to pickpocket Jack Lemmon and a fed up Lemmon snaps, before he turns the tables on him and pursues him through Central Park.

I've always thought of Neil Simon as being the one playwright consistently able to capture the genuine flavor of New York as a backdrop to the realistic personalities of his characters. Not being a New Yorker - Silicon Valley is about as far away as you can get - I'm afraid I have not been drawn to movies of his plays as strongly as to other comedies.But Prisoner of Second Avenue is an exception. Maybe it's because I am indeed in Silicon Valley, where layoffs are something we all get to experience. But this movie captured so aptly the craziness of being laid off, staying home all day - seeing only the one you love (but starting to hate him/her too as an extension of your own self-hatred). Making petty grievances huge, and trying to pretend the truly huge issues no longer exist. And worrying about the bills, and the clothes, and how silly the family behaves when money gets involved. And how the bad luck seems to snowball. And how "therapy" sessions seem so futile.The acting is superb - but I don't know of a movie where Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft have ever given us any less. Bancroft, in particular, when she makes the transition to anger, is perfect. Thankfully we're not handed any sop at the end either. The subject is so realistic that I don't find it funny at all - but that's a failing of the times we live in, not the movie. A great flick.

A real buried treasure in the Neil Simon canon. Jack Lemmon is a recently laid off New Yorker struggling to make sense of his life while fighting the daily demons of urban living. From nasty neighbors to insensitive relatives, Lemmon is hit with all of it...his life is in a nosedive! Neil Simon's screenplay is very cutting, even more so than in his earlier anti-NYC tirade THE OUT-OF-TOWNERS. Melvin Frank's direction does come off as a bit unimaginative, but that's really because most of the movie takes place in the apartment Lemmon shares with patient wife Anne Bancroft. The acting is excellent, with Lemmon giving a really great performance and Bancroft matching him with both her warmth and, when needed, caustic tongue. The supporting cast includes the great character actor M.Emmett Walsh as well as Elizabeth Wilson, Florence Stanley, and, in a rare acting role, the director Gene Saks, as Lemmon's overly cautious older brother.