Back in 1970 Neil Simon wrote an Original Screenplay (as opposed to adapting one of his stage plays for the screen) entitled The Out Of Towners in which husband and wife Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis were frustrated in their efforts to travel from Ohio to New York and faced more frustration when they finally did arrive there. Now almost three decades later Simon has rewritten it so that what is essentially the same plot finds Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau frustrated in their attempts to travel to the Californian nuptials of Lemmon's daughter and Matthau's son. I'm not criticizing or complaining. Anything written by Simon is fine with me and anything written by Simon and featuring Lemmon and Matthau is even finer and there are, after all, only seven basic plots as we all know. The leads of course are reprising the characters (Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison) they played in The Odd Couple (Matthau had, in fact, created the role of Oscar Madison in the original Broadway production and though it is widely acknowledged that sequels rarely work this is an exception with enough Simon one-liners to keep most of us happy. Recommended.

This sequel to "The Odd Couple" is odd. First of all, I don't think one really needed to happen and second of all if one was meant to be made it should have been made a little earlier. The 90's did sort of overuse the dynamic duo known as Lemmon and Matthau. Even in the 80's they paired up. But with films like "Grumpy Old Men", "Grumpier Old Men", "Out to Sea" and of course "The Odd Couple II", you have to ask yourself whether or not this great comedic pair really needed to return as Felix and Oscar. Still they both have the great chemistry on screen together. Always had, but this sequel felt oddly strained to me since most of it I've seen already in "Grumpy Old Men". The script by the great Neil Simon was very hit and miss with the jokes and the whole premise of both of them going to their children's wedding was forced. The direction and editing was pretty sloppy and there was a moment when they were walking in the desert when I almost had a brief flash back of when I saw the movie "Ishtar". The only thing worth seeing and is why I watched it is for Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Despite this odd sequel having a crapola premise, you still gotta love these guys. I'd say watch it for them, but also check out the first movie.

The original "Odd Couple" remains one of my all-time favorite movies, but this sequel to it, what, 40 years later? is just sad. Walter Matthau is old and tired, Jack Lemmon is old and tired, and Neil Simon must be old and tired too, to come up with such an un-funny and frankly embarrassing script.I turned this one off right after Lemmon said the F-word. No way in the world would Felix Unger say anything like that, and I would be completely dismayed and surprised if Neil Simon wrote it that way; I think some young whippersnapper on the set told Jack Lemmon to say it to make the dialog more "up to date" but it ruined what little hope I might have had for this film.

Oscar's son is marrying Felix's daughter... and the "odd couple" will now be traveling across California to try and find the wedding. But anything that can go wrong will go wrong when you're dealing with these grumpy old men.Normally, I don't think you wait 30 years to make a sequel... but they did it (probably setting some kind of record). And, you know, I liked this film. I watched it with my brother and my father, and I found it to be a good film for a family to watch (but an older family, because the language is a little bad). It's funny in a more or less clean way (no smut) and it's a no-brainer film (just more of Mathau and Lemmon tearing into each other).I liked some of the jokes more than others ("the crutch store" is pretty funny) and a lot of it was sort of cheesy. But it's also cute to see two old men try to pick up women half their age and get stranded in a desert. That's just so silly -- old men! Old men, who aren't timid, with no secrets.That's really all I can say about this one. It's just like watching "Grumpy Old Men", but it's in California rather than in the woods. Otherwise ,it may as well be the same film. Which works. Because unlike other films that seem to be copies of themselves, this has more of a "Laurel and Hardy" or "Abbott and Costello" feel where you can't imagine these old men doing anything differently. Check it out for an easy laugh.