(500) Days of Summer (USA, 2009)
Directed by Marc Webb
Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Chloe Moretz, Clark Gregg

As a film enthusiast you're always on the lookout for innovation in films - not specifically for films which move the goalposts and redefine our notions of cinema, but for those which take something well-worn and familiar and challenge it for a new audience. With this in mind, there is nothing that can get one's gander up more than a film which claims or thinks that it is being inventive, when in fact the merest glance beneath its surface shows that it is nothing of the sort.(500) Days of Summer comes at you with claims of being a genuine postmodern love story, an Annie Hall for the Twitter generation, or a rom-com for people who genuinely hate rom-coms. While it may not have the putridly glossy veneer of Sex and the City, the film ultimately shoots itself in the foot by being too kooky for its own good, and too structurally self-conscious to feel genuine. While there are still ideas and moments which sparkle, for the most part it feels disappointingly hollow.There's no denying that the makers of (500) Days of Summer had their hearts in the right place when setting out. In an age where cinema is increasingly and ever more cynically geared to the interests of teenage boys, romantic comedies or dramas with believable female protagonists are harder and harder to come by. The majority of contemporary romantic comedies are either predictable rehashes of stuff from the 1980s and 1990s, or vacuous vessels for product placement, offering women supposed material satisfaction in place of some more permanent form of happiness or self-esteem.Marc Webb's film is at its strongest when it attempts to puncture that self-contained, pre-packaged form of contentment. Joseph Gordon-Levitt writes greetings cards for a living, and struggles to remain optimistic or positive about the prospect of love in generalr. In one of the film's best scenes, he stands up in the middle of a meeting and lets rip about how hollow and meaningless love and happiness have become. Our culture has become so orientated around 'events', seeing emotion as something to be conveyed through commerce, that we are losing our ability to genuinely feel affection or understand each other.Somewhere within (500) Days of Summer, there is an edgier, more adventurous film which wants to use this premise to completely deconstruct the modern notion of love and romance. There is the potential within this material for something as scabrous and poisonous as Heathers, a ferociously funny film which ripped into the John Hughes view of high school by making you both squirm and howl with laughter. But try as he might, Webb can't seem to bring this desire to the surface for more than a few moments at a time. For all its claims of being left-field, indie-spirited and unconventional, (500) Days of Summer is structurally all too similar to the films whose clichés it claims to subvert.The single biggest problem with the film is that its structure of shuffled timeframes doesn't work. The film occupies the same kind of ground as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, trying to depict or capture the seemingly random way in which memory works within the context of a failed romantic relationship. But where Michel Gondry used the shuffled structure with great intelligence, confounding our expectations and getting us to question our own memories, Marc Webb treats it as a gimmick, as little more than a device to distract from the conventional elements of the story.This lack of confidence in the use of non-linear narrative is shown by the presence of a narrator. Having a narrator in any kind of story gives a feeling of certainty to the direction and outcome of the plot. This is even true of film noir, where an unreliable narrator makes us certain that we should not trust anyone. When you have a film which sells itself on being free-spirited and unpredictable, you don't want any creative element which would suggest otherwise. The narration here is as pointless as the narration in The Big Lebowski; it cheapens the experience by introducing choreography into an atmosphere of spontaneity.In terms of the central relationship, there isn't a great deal about either Tom or Summer which hasn't been covered in some depth before. Dynamically they're very similar to the main characters in Annie Hall: Joseph Gordon-Levitt may not be as neurotic or self-hating as Woody Allen, but Zooey Deschanel is frequently as off-the-wall (and as annoying) as Diane Keaton. The idea of the relationship being important despite the fact that boy and girl do not end up together has been handled more conclusively in several other films. I don't recall either Annie Hall or Gregory's Girl having such a clunker of a final scene.The familiar elements of (500) Days of Summer keep coming to the fore as the film moves forward (and backward). The conversations surrounding musical taste are essentially the same as the arguments in Stephen Frears' High Fidelity, but with an indie gloss on top (in other words, substitute any other band for 'The Smiths' and you're home free). Summer may claim that romance is dead like it's a novel concept, but she is essentially playing the Billy Crystal role in When Harry Met Sally..., being the sceptical side of a relationship which treads on the edge of friendship. There's nothing wrong with making a love story with familiar scenes and plot points, but it helps if the film is happy with admitting this, rather than constantly avoiding the issue so that it can continue claiming to be original.One of the problems with the indie genre is that it attempts to compensate for the ordinary, often dull nature of its stories with unbridled levels of kookiness. While (500) Days of Summer isn't exactly off the radar, it contains any number of moments which will send the less tolerant among us running for cover. Some of the sillier romantic scenes are funny, like Summer's quip about her high school nickname, or the couple frolicking around in Ikea and remarking that "there's a Japanese family in our bathroom". But Deschanel's impromptu singing and the drunken karaoke scenes which follow are a clear sign of the plot running out of steam. And that's not to mention the completely misjudged musical number, which is closer to High School Musical than Singing in the Rain.The final, and most surprising, problem is the film's lack of interest in the motivations of its female character. While Tom gets his fair share of backstory about failed relationships, and those of his male workmates for comparison, we get no real indication of what has made Summer who she is, and why she behaves towards men in the way she does. One could argue that this is symptomatic of the genre as a whole, with the film becoming less of a rom-com than a bromance that happens to have girls in. But that does not excuse the lack of intrigue surrounding Summer, for which Zooey Deschanel must take some of the blame. Regardless of how underwritten she is, you cannot make us care about someone by staring doe-eyed into middle distance for two hours.The other performances in the film are a little more promising. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has proved his action chops in Brick and Inception, and he does the best he can with a role which requires him to be constantly either in a mood or blank-faced wonder. A pre-Kick-Ass Chloe Moretz is thoroughly impressive as Tom's worldly-wise younger sister, with both actor and character having wisdom beyond their years without looking like they are trying to play younger than themselves. And Clark Gregg is convincing as Tom's boss, coming across as creepy and unsettling without going over-the-top.(500) Days of Summer is a disappointing and deeply overrated addition to the rom-com genre. When stripped of all its hype and kookiness, it is essentially Annie Hall with shuffled timeframes, half the brains and less than half the conviction. Had Marc Webb the guts to risk being unpopular, and deconstruct the notion of modern love head on, it might have been more memorable, distinctive and enjoyable. One hopes that he will do a better job when dealing with Peter Parker.

Rating:
Verdict: Overrated and overly kooky

Batman Forever (USA, 1995)
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Starring Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey, Chris O'Donnell

Changing the director in the middle of a franchise can create seismic differences in the quality of the respective instalments. Sometimes this is for the better: Alfonso Cuaron lifted the Harry Potter series with Prisoner of Azkaban, bringing a real sense of magic and wonder where Chris Columbus had failed on both counts. On other occasions, such as this one, the franchise does not benefit, resulting in a film with none of the weight of Tim Burton's instalments and which is nothing more nor less than a little bit boring.The key to understanding Batman Forever lies in the relationship between Tim Burton and his replacement Joel Schumacher. Despite having left the director's chair after the mixed reception of Batman Returns, Burton stayed on to produce the third instalment at the behest of Warner Brothers. While this did not give him anything resembling creative control, it did give him a certain amount of power on the set, so that he could always step in if he felt that things were going too far off the rails.As a result of Burton's presence there is some degree of continuity between the universe of Returns and Forever. Despite its gaudier design and campier style, it doesn't feel entirely like you've switched over to the TV series right after watching the second film. Certain sections, such as the death of Bruce's parents, have been reshot so that they retain their existing composition but with the new colour scheme and editing style. By making the head of Arkham Asylum a goofy-haired man called Dr. Burton, the series tips its hat to his style and sensibility, acknowledging that without him we would never have got this far.But while we are ostensibly in the same Gotham City, the emphasis has been shifted away from expressionist architecture and dark anti-heroes, and onto something a lot more frivolous. Where Burton uses style as a means of expressing deeper themes or character traits, Schumacher is all about style for its own sake, and never mind the story. This reflects their respective beginnings as filmmakers: Burton cut his teeth in animation, creating drawings which had to speak a thousand words, while Schumacher started out designing costumes for Woody Allen's Sleeper.What we end up with is a film which is lit to within an inch of its life, but scripted to a bare minimum. Like the TV series, there is a central plot which is relatively thin and largely implausible, around which action set-pieces can be positioned and stretched out for as long as is necessary. There are big references to Schumacher's back catalogue throughout - the street gang with fluorescent make-up are a re-tuning of the vampires from The Lost Boys, while the scenes with Nicole Kidman's psychiatrist tread very close to the dialogue in Flatliners.Batman Forever is often cited as the point when the Batman series shifted from being about the comics to being about the merchandise. Many fans have cited Val Kilmer's opening lines about "getting drive-through" as the moment at which the franchise jumped the shark. There is a large amount of truth in this: the shift towards brighter colours, sillier villains and the increased hardware available to Batman points towards a desire to sell action figures and lunchboxes rather than something more grown-up.

But while there is a market-driven edge to this Batman instalment, it is not as crass or as cynical as it could have been. The plot is at best ironic and at worst duplicitous - creating an evil weapon which warps people's minds through television, when whole sections of the film resemble a commercial, at least in the way that they are lit. But it doesn't force the merchandise down the viewer's throat like Batman and Robin did, and compared to the work of Michael Bay it's totally harmless.For its first 45 minutes, the predominant reaction to Batman Forever is not betrayal or disgust but boredom. The opening set-piece, involving Two Face's elaborate heist and a safe full of acid, feels dragged out and is played for laughs way too obviously. The stunts become increasingly preposterous and the supporting characters have less personality than in the Burton films.

Whereas in Batman Returns there was a sense of all the villains and some of the bystanders having minds of their own, the security guard in the bank is confined to whining "Oh no!" with increasing desperation. There is less of a role for Pat Hingle as Commissioner Gordon, and Michael Gough is increasingly sidelined. During the set-pieces Schumacher's love of aesthetics becomes frequently overbearing. In the sequence on the rocks near the Riddler's lair, there is so much green on the screen that you can't see what's going on. It's like watching Flash Gordon without the wit or directorial vision.The performances reflect this sense frustration. Val Kilmer is a plank as Bruce Wayne, and has an off-putting, haughty quality which conveys that Kilmer thought he was above the role. When he's in the bat-suit, he unwittingly pouts in almost every scene, as though he saw wearing the mask as an excuse to stop acting, at least with his face. Jim Carrey does an awful lot of gurning as Edward Nigma, and he only stops being annoying when he's being reined in by Tommy Lee Jones, who genuinely gets the character and seems to be having fun.Nicole Kidman, whose character was written specifically for the film, spends an awful lot of her screen time doing nothing but wandering around in a little black dress. Like Kim Basinger in the first film, whatever attempt is made to build her character up as intelligent is eventually undone; she ends up as a damsel in distress, accompanied by a gratuitous upskirt shot as she falls out of the tube. And Chris O'Donnell never entirely convinces either as Dick Grayson or as Robin. When he pretends to be Batman while facing the street gang, we're laughing at him as much as with him.However, after we have cantered through the Riddler's backstory and drunk our fill of pouting, whinging, gurning and flirting, Batman Forever finally kicks into gear and starts to have a plot which feels like it has something to say. It stops being an overgrown kid playing with toys and becomes a film about repression of childhood memories.Where the previous two films dealt with Batman as an outsider, who may be no better than the villains he is fighting, Batman Forever asks the question of whether Bruce Wayne can ever live with himself, as Batman and as a fractured human being. There is continuity from Batman Returns in the role of women; Chase makes a passing reference to Catwoman on the rooftop, and she proves instrumental in helping Bruce come to terms with himself.The point seems to be that the central dilemma of Batman is always the same - where does the man end and the bat begin, both in terms of personality and in terms of authorit. The various villains or sideshows which Batman encounters are just different ways of asking the same questions, whether through violence (Two-Face), riddles (The Riddler) or seduction (Chase). Considering what happened with the sequel, one could argue that this is just a ploy to have infinite new villains turn up in infinite new films, but at least the film has the guts to raise one of the central issues of the comics, even if it handles it with kid gloves.Batman Forever is a noisy, incoherent and often dull third instalment of a franchise which was already showing signs of fatigue. For all its good intentions and attempts to grapple with several ideas, it never follows through enough with any of them to cut the mustard, resorting to special effects to disguise Schumacher's shortcomings as a storyteller. But despite this, it's passingly entertaining, with Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey eventually coming through with the goods as a double act. It's a consistent and inoffensive disappointment; if only the same could be said for the sequel.

Rating:
Verdict: An inoffensive disappointment

The First Day of the Rest of Your Life (France, 2008)
Directed by Remi Bezançon
Starring Jacques Gamblin, Zabou Breitman, Deborah François, Marc-Andre Grondin

Every so often a film comes along which genuinely surprises you. The more one reads and learns about film, the more this knowledge threatens to cloud and prejudice one's judgement, to the point where the only surprises are crushing disappointments. The First Day of the Rest of Your Life is a great reminder that sometimes the best thing is to go in completely cold with nothing but hope.To judge a book by its cover (so to speak), there is much about First Day that would leave a seasoned filmgoer feeling uneasy. It's a drama about a fairly wealthy middle-class family going through difficult times - which conjures up horrible memories of the works of Noah Baumbach. The title smacks of the kind of forced, sugar-coated, self-help optimism that has dogged the later efforts of Cameron Crowe. And the opening credits, with its pop soundtrack and photo montage, lead us to expect something maddeningly quirky, in the manner of Little Miss Sunshine.Fortunately, it isn't long before all such fears and judgements are laid to rest. Once we recognise such stereotypes as the thin and petty generalisations that they are, First Day emerges as a damn fine piece of dramatic filmmaking. We see the lives of the different family members unfold with complete naturalism and humanity, and the stories which emerge are invariably relevant, interesting and above all real.Like a number of contemporary biopics, First Day consists of a series of vignettes spanning a couple of decades, which have both narrative and thematic connections. This device is interesting because it manages to be both episodic and narrative: it tells a proper story with a beginning, middle and end, but it also replicates the selective way in which we remember life. Moving from one time period to the next is like seeing old friends after many years, or watching old home videos: you get both the in-depth appreciation for the moments that play out and, though memory, an understanding of their context and importance.

Because the action isn't constrained by a desperate need to push on towards a pre-ordained conclusion, the characters are allowed to emerge of their own accord. None of the family members feel like rough cyphers for the author's own problems, or a vehicle for their obsessions (for instance, Baumbach's belief that all writers are inherently fascinating, no matter how repulsive or obnoxious). They feel like people we could feasibly meet and come to know, and we grow to love them very quickly.First Day takes us through a gamut of emotions as it explores a number of themes relating to family life and the process of growing up. Much of it is about love, or more specifically the extent to which love is often fleeting or unrequited. We follow the eldest son played by Pio Marmai (a dead ringer for Michael Sheen), as he meets his future wife from making too much noise in his new flat. We see them fall in love, marry but then slowly start to drift apart following his grandfather's death.

The younger son (Marc-Andre Glondin) has a flashback about halfway through to an air guitar competition (of all things) where he briefly meets a girl backstage. He tries to chat her up, she gives him her number with the promise of 'lessons', but he loses her number on the journey home. Having remembered it from dreaming about her, he calls it, only to find that she has long since moved. It's a beautifully judged moment, taking a familiar scenario and playing it with a refreshing absence of irony or spite.Despite its generally warm tone, First Day isn't afraid of depicting tragedy or the darker aspects of family life. The first of these relates to the youngest member, the daughter named Fleur (a very good performance by Deborah François). She loses her virginity to an older boy, someone who at first seems to be insightful and artistic (he listens to The Doors) but who is actually a coward and a jerk. When her brother turns up to confront him, he pulls a samurai sword on him, but doesn't have the conviction to take it any further. This experience shapes Fleur as she goes through the film with multiple bad relationships and declining self-esteem.

The film explores death on a number of occasions, and each time these events are handled with just the right blend of poignancy and pathos. It begins and ends with a death - the family pet at the beginning and the father at the end. In between the wine-loving grandfather (Roger Dumas) dies on the day of his grandson's wedding, and the mother comes close to death in a horrible car accident.Having handled its happier sections so well, this could be the point where First Day falls apart, tipping over into trite sentimentality or milking the sad sections for as long as possible. But first-time director Remi Bezançon resists the temptation to over-egg things; he keeps the characters' emotions in check and uses the soundtrack to set the overall tone. His choices are populist but appropriate, capturing the bittersweet nature of these moments. This is particularly true of the ending, where the father's ashes are scattered into the sea to the sound of Lou Reed's 'Perfect Day'.

Music also plays a large part in the story of First Day. On top of the storyline involving the air guitar concert, there is a section early on devoted to the grunge movement, which Fleur loves but neither of her parents understand. In a moment of dry comedy, we see Fleur and her brother returning home after a party to find their mother dancing in the front room. The brother remarks she is finding her own version of grunge, and the two burst out laughing.If there is a message to First Day, it is that family life is tough and divisive, but ultimately worth it. For all the flaws, faults and foibles that a family cultivates, and all the times when characters hate their kin and threaten to leave for good, in the darkest times they survive by coming together and appreciating the bonds that have been formed around them. It's not the most profound or insightful conclusion, but this is not a 'message film' in the strictest sense, and there is enough to enjoy in the characters for you to almost forget why you are watching them in the first place.

But even if your view of family life adheres closer to that of Philip Larkin ("they f*** you up, your mum and dad"...), there are still plenty of moments in the film that will raise a smile. The comic content varies from a running joke about walking into beams to an awkward encounter between the eldest son and his mother when she comes into his surgery wanting her breasts done. One of the biggest laughs comes from a story the father tells about sending some of his pubic hair to a girl he admired - a story which culminates in another boy being expelled and ending up with the woman he was trying to woo in the first place.The First Day of the Rest of Your Life is a genuinely charming film. It's not the most radical or thought-provoking constructions, and fans of Woody Allen or spikier comedies may lose patience in the lighter moments. But for the rest of us, it's a very pleasant diversion for a couple of hours, with moments of warmth, mirth, tragedy and above all genuine drama. Most of all, it proves that films about families having problems don't always have to make us lose the will to live.

Rating:
Verdict: A properly genuine family drama

Adaptation (USA, 2002)
Directed by Spike Jonze
Starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton

Although authors in general have pretty interesting lives, the physical act of writing is not particularly cinematic. Numerous filmmakers have tried to put writing on screen, but more often than not their efforts resemble po-faced versions of Monty Python's writing sketch, in which Michael Palin commentates on Thomas Hardy beginning his latest novel to a soundtrack of hysterical football supporters.

Adaptation is among the more successful attempts to put pen to paper on the silver screen. The reputation that Charlie Kaufman has accrued over the last decade leads us to expect the very best, and his screenplay is refreshingly loopy and intelligent. But it is not an unqualified success, being neither as tolerably quirky as Being John Malkovich nor as accessible in terms of characters as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.The first hurdle which Adaptation has to overcome is the dangers associated with being self-reflexive. There is a very thin line between being self-aware and self-obsessed, and the more one points out how much what we are seeing is a construct, the greater the risk of a film becoming more of an academic discussion than an exercise in drama.There have been writers who have sought to deliberately exploit this alienating effect. Bertolt Brecht wrote plays whose characters constantly remind the audience that what they are seeing isn't real, so that they would ask deeper questions about the world around them. In a similar way, Kaufman wants to demonstrate the relationship between art and reality while giving the audience some form of artifice to pull them through. In wanting us to both unpick every line and enjoy the story in itself, he succeeds wholeheartedly on the first part and partially on the second.Adaptation is really two films running side by side. One is about a screenwriter struggling to adapt The Orchid Thief, and the other is about Charlie Kaufman struggling to be Charlie Kaufman, who also happens to be adapting The Orchid Thief. The film mixes personal insight into Kaufman's condition with more general ideas and comments about writing. It's hard to tell whether the Charlie Kaufman on screen is Kaufman himself, or a subtly exaggerated version as in Being John Malkovich. But in the end there is enough in the way of drama to prevent us expending all our energies on such restrictive lines of inquiry.

With this double-barrelled structure in place, Adaptation can begin to explore a number of themes, all of which use writing as a metaphor for modern life. The first of these is the classic conflict between creativity and commercial success, something which has been previously explored in films like Barton Fink. But where the Coen Brothers explored this in a contrast between John Turturro's character and the industry oddballs surrounding him, Kaufman and Spike Jonze try something a lot more introspective.Using seamless split-screen shooting, Jonze has Nicolas Cage playing both Charlie Kaufman and his fictional brother Donald. Charlie is the creative genius who believes in his principles and pushing the envelope of his art form - and who as a result is neurotic, depressed and exhausted. Donald, on the other hand, is a hack writer who is content to play the industry game and wants to be happy above everything else.The conventional thing to do would be to wage war between the brothers with Charlie coming out on top in a definitive triumph of art over money. It's a corner that Kaufman is entitled to fight, but he knows that being a screenwriter is not that straightforward - and he knows that we know it too. Instead of being constantly at loggerheads, Charlie and Donald begin to take on each other's traits, from Donald using Charlie's facetious suggestion in his script to Charlie attending a Robert McKee seminar.The point that Kaufman is trying to make is not simply the need to balance artistic purity with a sense of realism, but about how obsessing with one's art can lead one to lose sight of what really matters - the audience and happiness respectively. Charlie receives a drubbing from McKee for claiming that there can be no inspiration in ordinary life: in pursuing purity he has lost sight of whom he is serving as an artist. Donald is the device through which Charlie learns to adapt to the needs of the book, the needs of his audience and thereby to the needs in life in general.

Within this there is an existential comment about our perception and creation of personal realities. When asked by his agent what the problem with the book is, Charlie blurts out that it has no story, to which his agent calmly responds: "Make one up." In the absence of a defined progression from A to B in our lives - or at least, one that we can plainly perceive - we invent metanarratives and motivations for ourselves, if nothing else so that we don't have to spend all our time staring at a blank page.Adaptation also refers to evolution, which plays out in great detail in one of Charlie's early drafts. There is a discussion as to whether such change is mandatory, and if it is, then whether the need to show anyone is also mandatory. Meryl Streep's character begins as a clearly-drawn journalist, but as the film moves on we see the various changes which have occurred and how she has attempted to conceal these adaptations. There is a comparison with her character in Plenty, insofar as both women have their lives changed by chance encounters with men and spent the remainder of their lives becoming slowly disillusioned by a world which does not accept their new ideals.Some of you may have noticed that, in this review so far, I have devoted very little time to the director. That is less an indictment of Jonze's abilities than a reflection of the film's nature. Adaptation is a film in which the screenplay is the main player; it governs and determines everything, and Jonze's direction is appropriately understated to facilitate this. One could almost argue that Adaptation is the 8 1/2 of screenwriters, challenging both the auteur theory in which the director is king and audience perceptions that films are driven or dominated by actors.

But Jonze's stand-offish approach also hints at the flaws with Adaptation. Despite the best efforts of both writer and director, whole sections do feel academic, with too much voiceover and too little drama. There is an argument that this is deliberate on the part of Kaufman to show how we dramatize so much of our lives, writing ourselves into clichés and conventions. But this jars with the film's message that this is an inevitable process which should be accepted, and as the later work of Woody Allen shows, neurosis and self-hate are not enough on their own to pull us into a story.

On top of this, most of the characters are in one way or another very irritating. Nicolas Cage is very good as both Charlie and Donald, but you end up wanting to strangle the former for being so pathetic - particularly when he goes all the way to New York, stands in a lift with Meryl Streep and doesn't have the guts to speak to her. Streep starts off well, but eventually she becomes too showy and her breakdown seems overdone.Then there is the group of New York intellectuals whose company Streep keeps; the dinner party sequence veers so close to the work of Noah Baumbach that had it gone on any longer, you would lose all patience with her character. The best performance by a mile is Chris Cooper, who genuinely inhabits John Laroche. You can almost smell the manky clothing and un-brushed teeth, and his rambling swathes of dialogue are both insightful and broadly comedic.Adaptation is another intelligent effort from Kaufman which is partially hamstrung by its character construction and Jonze's unwillingness to be more commanding with his camera. The ideas which the film raises are fascinating, and even Kaufman at his weakest is more insightful and engaging than half the screenwriters working in Hollywood today. But ironically for a film about writing, it would have benefited most from a director willing to put his foot down and create something a little less didactic.

Rating:

The Odd Couple (USA, 1968)
Directed by Gene Saks
Starring Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, John Fiedler, Herb Edelman

The Odd Couple is a comedy which has stood the test of time and survived all attempts made on its longevity, from its endless inferior imitators to its own god-awful sequel. Neil Simon's script, brought to the screen by Gene Saks, is still as razor-sharp as went it debuted on Broadway, and while not quite everything has translated smoothly to the big screen, it remains a yardstick against which modern comedies should be measured.When adapting a play for the big screen, one needs to create the impression of a world which is expansive. The spacial limitations that come from staging a play are not an immediate problem when making a film: you can't knock through walls in a theatre, but you can always build a bigger set.

If The Odd Couple has a flaw, it is that portions of it still feel stagey, and the ways in which it attempts to get around this are not entirely satisfactory. Rather than show every last angle of Oscar's flat, as would have been impossible on Broadway, Saks resorts to adding in a lot of extra scenes which may play well as set-pieces but feel disconnected and unnecessary. The screenplay, adapted by Simon himself, has been plumped full of travelogue scenes, ranging from Felix's botched suicide attempts to the guys driving around in Murray's car looking for him. As with Shadowlands, these scenes which are designed to broaden out the play and make the world expansive only serve to highlight how theatrical the finished product still feels.But like Shadowlands, it isn't hard to get beyond or forgive the stagey qualities of The Odd Couple once we have gotten on board with the characters and begun to laugh (or cry). And in one aspect, the limited space and use of long takes works to the advantage of the performers. Much of the original script requires characters to talk over each other or react quickly to changes in the others' postures. Although the actors have the scripts learnt in their heads, they approach every scene knowing that the word "cut!" could be at least two minutes away. This keeps the energy up and convinces us that these characters could exist beyond the occasional edit.This is particularly recognisable in the central performances, which blend together in perfect (dis)harmony from the outset. Walter Matthau, who had played the character on Broadway, is the perfect middle-aged slouch. He has charm, intellect and is loyal to his friends, but is incapable of running his own life, shambling around his spacious apartment like he has worn the same clothes all his life. Jack Lemmon, who steps into the shoes of Art Carney, really taps into the character's well-meaning up-tightness and self-hating neurosis. The scene of him clearing his ears in the diner is a perfect match of dry anxiety and belly laughs that would have made Woody Allen proud.

When The Social Network was deservedly garlanding awards attention, one aspect which was widely praised was Aaron Sorkin's script; it moved through the creation of Facebook at a blistering pace, conveying both the natural impatience of the characters and the ruthlessness of the world in which they exist. But the origins of Sorkin's rapid-fire screenplay can be found in Simon, whose characters have an equally large amount to say and are using language as a means of achieving political dominance, using every sentence to compete for space. And like The Social Network, it takes a few minutes for us to tune in and get used to the pace of the dialogue.But while The Social Network's script is designed to embody and convey impatience and impulsiveness, The Odd Couple is all about awkwardness and neurosis. On its simplest level it is the epitomic buddy movie, the film to which we owe everything from Lethal Weapon to Mississippi Burning. Popular culture has so readily embraced the archetypes of Felix and Oscar, the two opposites who don't attract but have to get along, that there almost isn't any point repeating the reasons for their appeal. Suffice to say, the combination works, as insight and as entertainment.Dig a little deeper, and the film becomes a comedy about catharsis and the difficulties of accepting the end of a relationship. Felix and Oscar have completely different approaches to the women in their lives, whether their ex-wives or their potential future brides in the shape of the Pigeon sisters. Felix finds it hard to let go of Frances even when she wants to repaint his room just after he's left: because so much of his life is based around things being beautiful on the surface, it is completely anathema that anyone should desert him, especially when, in his mind, he has done nothing wrong.

Oscar, on the other hand, hates even talking to Blanche, letting along paying her alimony. He wisecracks about her during the opening game, remarking that "Poland could live for a year on what my kids leave over for lunch!". His attitude towards woman is strictly one of personal interest; he invites the Pigeons over with the sole intention of bedding them. But as the film rolls on both characters pick up on each other's traits, learning to atone for their past mistakes on the one hand and to seize upon the various new chances of romance on the other.Within this exploration of two men's romantic relationships with women, there is also a more nuanced examination of platonic love. The Odd Couple is as much about men's desperate desire for love as it is about their seemingly inability to be emotional or discuss their problems with other men. Felix finds it easy to open up to the sisters about how much he misses his wife, but when he tries to talk to Oscar about it, he feigns disinterest. Likewise Oscar desperately tries to convey his happiness to Felix when the girls invite them back, but Felix interprets it as selfish sarcasm. These scenes are expertly staged so that they simultaneously make you laugh and break your heart.The Odd Couple also has elements of class struggle about it. In amongst the various complaints about Felix disinfecting the playing cards and insisting upon coasters, there is an undercurrent of snobbery on the part of Felix and a bitter reaction on the past of Oscar. Felix is richer than Oscar and has an emphasis on standards which he likes to make clear whenever possible. After the meatloaf has burned, he spits out the line that "people like you don't appreciate good cooking and that's why they eat TV dinners!". Oscar meanwhile is an ordinary white-collar guy who loves his job but has little in the way of ambition. He approaches Felix's standards in the same way as he approaches his cleaning: constant irritation, boiling over into anger and ending up as outright resentment.But even if you don't want to read into all these undercurrents, The Odd Couple still works as a simple comedy. The laughs are frequent and consistent, drawing subtly on the traditions of farce and comedies of manners to produce two hours' worth of severe chuckling. The smooth jazz score which punctuates the film gives certain sections the feeling of a silent movie, while the long awkward silences in the second act are like a lighter, less absurdist variant on the work of Samuel Beckett or Harold Pinter. There's something for absolutely everyone, whether you pick up all the period details or not.With the exception of its occasional theatricality, The Odd Couple is a virtually perfect comedy. It's a real hum-dinger which still hits every note right on over 40 years after its release, and though the times have moved on it hasn't lost any of its subtle edge. Its personalities and conversations remain charming and familiar, and the performances are career high-points for all involved. A real must-see comedy.

Rating: 4.5/5
Verdict: A near-as-damnit perfect comedy