The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975)

Touches You

Absolutely the worst movie.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Modern day New York City couple struggles with day-to-day hardships while living in the treacherous Big Apple. Jack Lemmon has yet another series of Neil Simon-scripted nervous breakdowns--too soon after "The Out-of-Towners". In fact, within the first 15 minutes of "Prisoner", we're reminded of "The Out-of-Towners", "The Apartment" and "Save the Tiger". It's a replay of themes--Jack Lemmon's Greatest Hits. Often times, there's simply no point to Lemmon's ranting, and the sources of his anger (unemployment, crime, etc.) are expressed as personal diatribes--these are his exclusive problems rather than universal frustrations. Anne Bancroft is touching as Jack's put-upon spouse, though not even she can save the perplexing finish, which throws everything out the window for the sake of an innocuous chuckle. ** from ****

Jack Lemmon & Anne Bancroft play Mel & Edna Edison, a middle-aged couple who live in a Manhattan sky rise apartment complex. When Mel unexpectedly loses his job, he tries in vain to find another, but in this economy and at his age, that proves difficult, and Mel finds himself increasingly depressed after a further series of setbacks leaves him homebound, and near insanity...Neil Simon story doesn't sound much like a comedy, but has a good script and sympathetic performances detailing their increasing desperateness. Not nearly as funny as "The Odd Couple", though not as harrowing as "The Out Of Towners", this modest satire falls somewhere in between, and works well, though does come to a stop more than a conclusion.

If Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue is less than an intense survey of a married couple impelled to nervous breakdown by the exasperations and disgrace of bourgeois living, it still achieves compelling thrust, both somber and hilarious, mostly the latter though. If Melvin Frank's direction is accomplished but not inventive, he's skillfully served by a cast largely populated by Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft, who launch vigorously sincere characterization as credible as the real Second Avenue and other New York locales captured by the Technicolor cameras.Lemmon is aggravated and angst-peppered owing to the defective air-conditioning and thoughtless neighbors in his high-rise apartment house, among other things. And, his tattered nerves aren't greatly relieved when he is fired by his on-the-fence company. As an unemployed ad executive, he can't be liable for being impatient with the unemployment office. And he shouldn't be condemned for pounding on flimsy walls, cursing the neighbors, who drench him with water in reprisal, and developing neuroses swollen by imposed joblessness and appointments with an evasive shrink.If Bancroft, as his genuinely devoted spouse who purposefully gets a job to sustain them, becomes overwrought and bemused to the point of paranoia, she, too, can't be blamed for her mounting worries when she ultimately must choose whether to receive financial help from her husband's apprehensive, if quizzical, siblings. Lemmon, no alien to Simon's work, and Bancroft are most believable and identifiable when unromanticized, and the strength of the piece is in their collaboration in roles as familiar in their comic reciprocating as many of New York's scuttling millions. And they get strong support from Odd Couple director Gene Saks, as Lemmon's prosperous, straightforward older brother and Elizabeth Wilson and Florence Stanley, as his suspicious sisters, not to mention a young Sylvester Stallone's hilarious scene, which could be the high point of the picture.They aren't in the thick of Greek tragedy or in humdrum sitcom TV. Simon is sober about a premise that isn't momentous and he reasonably swathes its earnestness with real laughs that pop up, including radio news items such as the update that a Polish freighter has just collided with the Statue of Liberty. And, with a cast whose members recognize the value of what they're saying and doing, the trials and tribulations of Second Avenue become a diversion.

Mel Edison (Jack Lemmon) and his loving wife Edna (Anne Bancroft) live on Second Avenue in NYC. Mel hates the city and his job and complains nonstop. Edna tries to calm him down. Then Mel is laid off from his job and has a complete nervous breakdown.Sounds like a drama but it's not. It's an adaptation of a Neil Simon play (adapted by Simon himself) and it's more or less a comedy with a very serious edge. The script itself manages to switch gears from comedy to drama pretty effortlessly and great acting by Lemmon and Bancroft keeps it going. There are quite a few people who hate Simons plays. They say the one liners are old and the characters are stale but I'm not one of those people. I happen to think his jokes are quite funny and finds he writes three-dimensional, believable characters. But, if you don't like Simon, this movie won't change your mind. Some people might accuse this of being dated--there was a huge recession going on in the mid 1970s and that is worked in to the plot. But, seeing as we're in another one at the moment, this is very timely. My only complaint is the ending is way too pat to be believable but that's minor. I give it a 7. Look for F. Murray Abraham as a cab driver and Sylvester Stallone.