Day One: Grumpy Old Men

My GRUMPY OLD MEN review is far too long to post on the tail end of GROUNDHOG DAY, so it's going to get a separate post.

GRUMPY OLD MEN:

Starring:
-Jack Lemmon
-Walter Matthau
-Ann-Margret

Directed by: Donald Petrie

Screenplay Credits: Mark Steven Johnson

MPAA Rating: PG-13 - For some sexual references


The film opens with Jack Lemmon climbing out a second story window, which he really shouldn't be doing at his age. Someone is looking for Gustafson (Lemmon) to deliver a final notice of some sort. He gets away, but bumps into his neighbor, Max Goldman (Matthau). We quickly determine that these two are comfortable old enemies, despite their similarities. Both are lonely old coots who are - you guessed it - grumpy. Despite being sourpusses, they are still Lemmon & Matthau, and even in the first frames of the film they play off each other remarkably. I'm especially impressed with Lemmon, whose expressions haven't changed one bit since his younger "Apartment" days.

Both men are curious as to who moved into the house across the street, especially when they notice all the weird stuff the movers are carting in, like giant statues of nude men and paintings of Jesus in agony. Their curiosity is further piqued later that night, when they see the new neighbor wildly careening up and down the snowy street on a snowmobile. The neighbor finishes their ride, dismounts, and sashays toward their house, pausing only to take off their helmet and shake out full, shoulder-length auburn hair. At this point, the audience is supposed to go, "Holy moly! It's Ann-Margret!" But, weirdo that I am, the only thing I thought was, "Hey, she screwed Elvis. Lucky."

The next morning, both coots are shoveling heaps of snow off their cars - geez, move to Florida already- and discussing the gruesome ways in which all their friends are dying.

"Hypothermia's a bitch. Not quick like a stroke." - Max

Lemmon heads to a local general store, strangely bashing his car into a load of trash cans out back. He purchases some bait and heads out to go ice fishing with his dad, the awesome Burgess Meredith. Hearing Meredith say things like, "Didja mount her?" and "Does she have big thighs?" before making an obscene gesture is well worth the price of admission for me.

"If I was a young fella like you, I'd be mountin' every woman in Wabasha!" - Burgess Meredith

John only managed to bring in two fish, while Max is proudly lugging five or six. Max goads John about his lax fishing abilities, prompting John to surreptitiously toss one of his fish in the backseat of Max's car.

"Go to work, baby." - John

Fast forward to later that evening; much later, it's 1:30 in the morning. John is awakened by a gentle tapping at his door. Thinking it's the same creepy guy from the first scene, John bails out the same second story window. Again I thought, "Careful, old timer. You'll break a hip." And sure enough he loses his footing and executes an extremely well-choreographed fall, finding himself on his back and staring up at Ann-Margret. He tries to wheeze an explanation, but the fall totally knocked the wind out of him and he can't manage it. Ann-Margret says she saw his light on and wondered if she could use his bathroom, which strikes me as odd because she's, you know, got a house right next door.

John finds this odd, too, and asks if her toilet is broken. She says no, she was just lonely and likes using other people's toilets. She's a freak like that.

"I do so love bathrooms. You know, you can tell an awful lot about a person from his bathroom." - Ann-Margret

He tries to put her off into the guest bathroom, but she's adamant about the upstairs john. The downstairs John starts creeping up the stairs but hears a flush, chickens out, and scampers down again. Ann-Margret emerges, leans over the railing and murmurs, "Fascinating."

Introductions are finally made. We learn that she teaches American literature, she steals people's mail, her name is Ariel, she knows how to play chess, and she's a flirty old firecracker. Cut to Max and John, who have run into one another at the pharmacy and strike up a conversation about who has had the worst and most painful ailments.

"Gallstones are for pussies!" - Max

Then Ariel busts in and puts a stop to this conversation by tossing Max some mail that was "mistakenly" delivered to her house and hitting up the pharmacist for her herbal body oils. Then, just as quickly as she arrived, she leaves and all the men scoop their jaws off the floor.

Darryl Hannah shows up with a cute blonde toddler. This is John's daughter Mel and apparently she and her jerk husband Mike are separating.

"I never liked him anyway." - John

Out bursts Ariel in a blue bathing suit. She screams a little, plops down in the snow and rolls around like a deranged beauty queen before popping back into her mansion. This leads me to believe that homegirl's rockin' some stronger stuff than tea tree oil. Switch to Max, whose politician son shows up but is too busy to stay for microwave lasagna. The coots engage in a series of juvenile pranks and hi-jinx, which culminates in Max running a couple of people off the road as he searches for the source of the mysterious odor in his car... while driving. Both men wind up at Ossie Davis' store where they gossip about Ariel.

"Women and fish; you could never catch either one of them, Gustafson." - Max

Max finally discovers the decomposing fish in his car, then heads off to the ice to snag more. Sadly for him, a fish makes off with his lucky green hornet fishing pole. Back at John's, Max's son Jacob and Mel chat about their younger days and Jacob discovers that Mel and her husband are splitting up.

"I haven't had sex in 15 years." - John

Cut to Thanksgiving night and an adorable shot of Blonde Toddler spoon-feeding Burgess Meredith. All together now: "Aww!"

Suddenly, Ossie Davis shocks everybody by showing up at Ariel's with a rose. The coots watch enviously from their respective windows. Looks like Ariel's down with the swirl. The Penguin makes a lewd joke and totters off. Needless to say, Max and John nearly fall over themselves trying to get to Ossie for the scoop. Ossie makes some cryptic, wondrous remarks to string them along, then chuckles when they leave.

"Couldn't get it up, huh Chuck?" - Max

Cue the "I'm Too Sexy" montage of Max in the tub, John shaving his scruff and doing his best Home Alone kid impression, and Max beating him to Ariel's place with what is probably a thirty year old box of chocolates. Max tours her house and gets a load of her kooky art collection. He definitely gets an eyeful of a life-size sculpture of her well-endowed, deceased husband. Max invited her to the ice shanty. They scream for a while as Ariel manages to catch a huge fish. It struggles in her arms and, much to Max's chagrin, she quickly releases it before Max can even snap a picture.

Cut to Burgess Meredith, who has snagged Max's green hornet fishing pole. John seizes it triumphantly and scoots over to Ossie's place. He finds the back door locked, and walks around the front to find a stern-faced cop scribbling on the clipboard. Uh oh.

Max and Ariel say farewell and Max ambles over to John's to gloat. That's when John drops the bomb: Ossie Davis is dead.

"In his sleep? Lucky bastard." - Max

Max and John squabble, then John storms into his house and snaps the Green Hornet in two. There's a knock at the door. John thinks it's Max but oops! It's the IRS man with the dumb earflap hat!

Max takes a moment to mourn Chuck, and John returns from his meeting with the IRS dude to discover Ariel in his kitchen. She appears to be doing it up Martha Stewart style and preparing a lavish meal for the two of them. Nice. Creepy, but nice. The next day, John seeks fatherly advice from Burgess:

"The first 90 years or so, they go by pretty fast... then one day you wake up and you realize that you're not 81 anymore. And then you begin to count the minutes, rather than the days, and you realize that pretty soon you'll be GONE! And that all you have, see, is the experiences! That's all there is, Johnny, to everything! The experiences! You mount the woman, son. Or else, send her out to me, huh?" - Burgess Meredith

Cut to Ariel taking John for the ride of his life on her demon snowmobile. While John and Ariel look over the snowy town, then fall flat on their backs to make snow angels and hold hands, Max knocks on Ariel's door to offer her two tickets to a hockey game, and spots the IRS agent arriving at John's for an appointment. Later, Max is plopped in front of the television watching an enthusiastic, bendy woman working out, and wistfully gazing over at Ariel's house. Ariel, however, is over at John's, where we learn that John lost his son in Vietnam, and that John and Max were best friends as kids, but became enemies over a woman. No surprise there. John goes in for the kill and starts smooching Ariel, but she shuts him down with the old, "It's getting late" routine.

Ooh. Ouch, burn.

"It's time for bed," she says, and starts to leave. But wait... wait a minute... what's this?!?! She's locking the door! Seductively!

"I said it's time for bed," she repeats, and again I think about Elvis. John can't believe his luck and races up the stairs after her. Ariel assures him that she and Max are just friends, and that she hasn't been bed-hopping. John reveals that he hasn't gotten freaky since October 4th, 1978. This does not deter her, and the two of them disappear into the bedroom to get their wrinkly freak on. Of course, the next morning Max is on the way to give Ariel some wildflowers and he catches her merrily doing the morning-after "walk of shame." He's distraught, but if I remember Grumpier Old Men accurately, he'll soon be banging Sophia Loren and all will be forgiven.

Now we're on to my very favorite scene in the whole movie. John, in boxers, socks, and thermal undershirt does his best RISKY BUSINESS into the frame and proceeds to dance around the kitchen to the song "Love Man." Here Lemmon proves that not only has he still got the moves, they are hilarious. John spots the broken green hornet and we cut to a depressed Max sitting out in his ice shanty. Instead of bait, he's got the remains of a six pack dangling off his pole and into the ice.

There's the old "shave and a haircut" knock at the door and Max looks out to see a happy John, full of the joys of spring. Max spots the green hornet - now repaired - by the door, but is still infuriated. So he does what any normal person would do and rams John's shanty with his truck until he's shoved it out onto thin ice and it promptly sinks. Max and John start old man fighting. The danger here is not that one of them will actually land a punch, rather the fear is that they will both slip and break their hips. Max accuses John of stealing Ariel just like he did May. Here we learn that May left Max for John but was unfaithful, and Max ended up with a good woman named Amy. The realization of this seems to confuse him, or maybe it's just the onset of Alzheimer's.

At any rate, soon John is yelling about Ariel and the best sex he's ever had, so Max tackles him into a heap of snow and tries to stab him with a fish. This is immediately followed by another adorable Burgess Meredith moment. John's dad steps in to break up the fight:

"HEY! Drop! That! Fish!" - Burgess Meredith

Like two guilty youngsters, John and Max freeze and Max exclaims, "Mister Gustafson!" And for just a moment, John Lemmon and Walter Matthau are a couple of kids getting in trouble with their pap and it's stinkin' adorable. Burgess sends everybody back to their shanty with a cry of:

"Don't make me have to separate you two again, dammit! Damn kids... can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em."

It's a beautiful moment.

Fish weapons aside, Max hits John with the big guns and asks the question I've been wanting to ask for nearly the whole film: how, exactly, is John going to take care of Ariel when the IRS takes his house away?

John's playing chess alone looking all sad when the photo of him and Max as kids catches his eye and he decides to fold and let Max go after Ariel. As is her custom, she bursts in with a freaky painting of a snow angel yammering some nonsense about Roosevelt's New Deal. John ends things with Ariel and she's obviously very upset. She ditches the snow angel at the curb and dashes toward her house in tears, clearly suffering from "why buy the cow when you get the milk for free" remorse.

Cut to Christmas Eve. Max and Ariel are whooping it up on the snowmobile. Melanie and the grandbaby show show up with... Mike, who turns out to be that dude from Grease II who looks like a Muppet. John, annoyed with Mike's B.S., grabs his daughter's face and says:

"Mel, if you see a chance to be happy, you grab it with both hands and to hell with the consequences." - John

John makes for a bar to get away from Mike and Jacob shows up with a piece of broccoli to kiss Melanie underneath because he didn't have any mistletoe. Imagine his surprise when slimy Mike wanders in. Jacob covers well, though. He heads back to his place to talk some sense into his crusty old dad. Jake insists that his father make peace with John for Christmas.

"I'd rather kiss a dead moose's butt." - Max

Nevertheless, he shows up at the bar where he and John exchange holiday greetings of:

-Moron.
-Putz.

Max thanks John for the fishing pole, but John would rather talk 'Ariel.' Walking home from the bar, John starts to gasp around and clutch his left arm before collapsing in the snow. Max starts stomping by and finds him, then hurries for help. Aww. He does care!

At the hospital, a teary-eyed Max goes in to see John and tell him "Merry Christmas... Putz." Max then goes to Ariel's to tell her about John and the next thing we see is Ariel grabbing John's hand.

"You know, my husband passed away at Easter, and if you leave me at Christmas, I won't have any kind of holidays to look forward to." - Ariel

We see the IRS dude wandering around John's house, bitching about John owing $57,000 due to some technicality. Mayor Jacob arrives just in time and saves the day, then...

Uh oh. We're at a church.

Mel and Jacob meet up to discuss her divorce. YAY!

Burgess Meredith appears and yells at them to "get your asses in here," so he's not dead. YAY!

Then we see

Jacob in a suit!
Max in a suit!
John in a suit!
Burgess walking Ariel down the aisle!

YAY!

"Don't call me a shmuck, you putz." - John

Burgess and Ann liplock, and the bride and groom hop into a limo. They start to leave, but smell something foul... The car stops while John pitches out a dead fish. What a putz. Later on, Max heads to the VFW for a Daughter's of the Revolution dance and Jacob spies Melanie through the window. She beckons him over, the tease.

Something happens with broccoli, but I won't give it away.

Whatever you do, stay tuned for the blooper reel, which is precious (especially thanks to all the filthy things that Burgess says, the sly devil). In the end, I give the film a solid A. It's definitely a comedic treasure, simply because of its grumpy old co-stars. It's a fun movie, so slap it on your Netflix. You won't be sorry.

Off in search of popcorn,

M. Hollywood