Buddy Buddy (1982)
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Synopsis: This black comedy stars the comic duo of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as a pair of antagonists. Trabucco (Matthau) is a hitman who, having already dispatched two of the witnesses to an act of criminal fraud is about to ice the third, mobster Rudy Gambola (Fil Formicola) before he can testify.... This black comedy stars the comic duo of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as a pair of antagonists. Trabucco (Matthau) is a hitman who, having already dispatched two of the witnesses to an act of criminal fraud is about to ice the third, mobster Rudy Gambola (Fil Formicola) before he can testify. As he makes his final preparations, he's interrupted by the sounds of Victor Clooney (Lemmon) trying to hang himself in the next hotel room, depressed over his wife Celia's (Paula Prentiss), romance with her sex therapist, Dr. Zuckerbroot (Klaus Kinski). Annoyed, the hitman binds and gags Clooney, who nevertheless escapes, and decides to switch to a leap from the hotel ledge. The desperate Trabucco finally agrees to take Clooney to see his wife at the clinic, simply and literally to get rid of him, a task which proves much more difficult than the hitman could ever have imagined. Despite occasional flashes of the Wilder wit, "...premature ejaculation means always having to say you're sorry," and Lemmon screaming "Apocalypse Now," as he tries to set himself aflame, the film is a grim, tiresome, finale to one of the great directorial careers. [More]
Genre: Comedies
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Paula Prentiss, Klaus Kinski, Ed Begley
Screenwriter: Billy Wilder, I. A. L. Diamond, Francis Veber
Producer: Jay Weston
Composer: Lalo Schifrin
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Reviews
There is some byplay with doubles, disguises and mistaken identity, but the rest is all bland Panavision, dreary back projection, and laboured dialogue.
Wilder helming the classic comic pairing of Matthau and Lemmon is always going to be difficult to dismiss, but it has to be said that all involved had seen better days at the time this got made.
Instead of the sentimental cop-out that usually closes his films, Wilder has isolated an impossibly tiny center of real value and belief, an optimism that is extremely moving in its microscopic dimensions.

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