There's more to offer in the opening of The Odd Couple than in the entirety of most films. Felix Unger (the poor guy's monogram even curses him) checks into a New York hotel. A cleaning lady says "Good night." "Goodbye," he answers back. In his room he empties his pockets, then struggles to take off his wedding ring only to put the objects neatly into an envelope, addressed to his wife and beloved children. When the viewer finally puts it together  aha, he's going to off himself  we watch him struggle to open the window  oh no, he's going to jump  The poor guy injures his lower back. This is all you need to know about Felix Unger  his wife has left him, he's a compulsive cleaner and he's a hypochondriac. And all in one scene. This is the particular genius of Neil Simon's comedy  it's about situation and character. There are few obvious physical jokes  no kicks to the groin, no cheap gags  just funny characters in uncomfortable situations. And, of course, he is a master of manipulating the audience's expectations. Coming from the Swingers era, imagine what I thought in the date scene when Felix starts lamenting about the breakup of his marriage to the girls his roommate Oscar has worked so hard to get into his apartment. He's blowing it, right? Think again. The girls love his sensitivity, his ability to cry in front of them. They invite him back to their place since his meatloaf has burned because Oscar wasn't paying enough attention to it. He's in like Flynn, right? Uh, yes, but he doesn't want to go with the girls because he's feeling vulnerable. Great stuff. And it's made even greater with a style that minimizes editing and maximizes the wonderful eight-room apartment set. You've got Jack Lemmon and the slouchy, pouchy Walter Matthau for Chrissakes, why mess it up? The visual style reminded me of Breakfast at Tiffany's, in that great effect is made from a large depth of field and the interplay between the various planes of action. Particularly memorable is the scene in which Felix, fleeing from Oscar, closes a partition only to realize the partition doesn't cover the side where Oscar is coming from. You get a real sense of the layout of the apartment, and thus the proximity in which the two divorcées live. The twist here is that these two are really married  to each other. So the observations about married life that might be ignored in an ordinary romantic comedy are made all the more poignant since they are two guys.

Although the production and Jerry Jameson's direction are definite improvements, "Airport '77" isn't much better than "Airport 1975": slick, commercial rubbish submerging (this time literally) a decent cast. Jack Lemmon is the pilot of a packed airliner which gets hijacked by art thieves and crashes into the sea (all the publicity claimed it was near the Bermuda Triangle, but there's no mention of it in the film itself). When the rescue ships come to raise the airplane out of the water, we see all their cranes dropping (rather blindly) into the ocean and it's hard not to laugh (imagining the cranes plugging the plane, the passengers and the waterlogged script). NBC used to air what appeared to be the "director's cut", with at least an hour of extra footage--mostly flashbacks--injected into the proceedings with all the subtlety of a "Gilligan's Island" episode. Most exciting moment is the plane crash, and some of the players have a little fun: Lee Grant is an obnoxious drunk, Brenda Vaccaro a no-nonsense stewardess, Joseph Cotten and Olivia de Havilland are flirting oldsters. Still, the personality conflicts and the excruciating military detail eventually tear at one's patience. ** from ****