People are voting emotionally.

Disturbing yet enthralling

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I love Neil Simon's work; George Burns- one of the funniest straight-man of all time; Walter Matthau among my favorites- How could this all-star lineup finish in last place?The opening scene of the pigeon standing on George M. Cohan's statue is the best part of the movie.The rest is worse than crash and burn, it's burn the whole way down before crashing into nothingness.

I have always liked Walter Matthau, so it was very disappointing to see him in this film, made up to look much older and overacting tremendously. George Burns was much better, with his usual deadpan delivery. I suppose that this was kind of a preview of Matthau in "Grumpy Old Men". Dealing with those in their dotage, with the hearing loss, and memory loss, etc. is quite tiresome, and watching it in this movie was also quite tiresome. It is too bad, but the funny lines were not all that funny. I expected more from a Neil Simon script. Richard Benjamin was okay as the nephew/agent, and the direction was done nicely. But I was impatient for the film to end, and that pretty much says it all.

The premise is simple: two old men were members of a vaudeville duo decades ago and broke up acrimoniously, but now the nephew of one wants them to reunite for a television special to showcase one of their acts. Reluctantly, they agree, though they had not met or spoken in twenty years. Once together, however, they find they still dislike one another.The big problem with the story is that it was written in the 1970's and takes place contemporaneously, while vaudeville effectively died out many years before the storyline's breakup would have taken place. Also, Matthau's character is a nasty man-nasty to everyone, even the nurse who takes care of him when he becomes ill. He's supposed to be the protagonist of the story, but I found no reason whatever to like him, or for anyone to want to have anything to do with him. The story would have been more credible if the televised reunion had fallen through.

An old vaudeville team of Willy Clark (Walter Matthau) and Al Lewis (George Burns) were one of the best known but they broke up hating each other. Over 20 years later they agree to get together for a TV special...but find out they STILL hate each other. Willy's nephew/agent (Richard Benjamin) tries to get them to work together.A big hit in its day and it won George Burns an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. I (somewhat) liked it. It was written by Neil Simon so its non-stop one-liners. Some of it was funny but making jokes of Willy and Al's senility was NOT. Also I never liked Matthau. I never thought he was a good actor and something about him just rubbed me the wrong way. Also his character here is so caustic you get sick of him quickly. All that aside this was fun. Burns is just great tossing off one-liners with ease and even Matthau was good matching him. Their verbal battles are the best sequences in the movie. Also Benjamin is very good as Willy's nephew trying to get the two of them to work with each other. For me it's worth seeing for Burns alone. This jump started his career in a big way and two years later he had ANOTHER hit with "Oh God". So, this is good. Just good--not great. Matthau's character really makes this hard to love. I give it a 7.