Some of the best movies that are categorized as "comedies" actually blur between comedy and drama. "The Graduate" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", which were made also in the late 1960's are perfect examples. Are they comedies with dramatic undertones, or dramas with a lot of humor? In many respects, "The Odd Couple" falls into this same category of being both comedy yet highly dramatic with deep underpinnings about human nature. Much of what happens may be funny to the audience but the characters are not laughing.
Despite the rather light-hearted TV show of the 1970's, the original "Odd Couple" is not merely about a neat guy and messy guy who are forced to live together because of their marital situation. It's really about two opposites who must face why their marriages fell apart and how their detrimental idiosyncrasies reveal themselves outside of their marriage. Neatness, the characteristic of Felix Ungar (Jack Lemon perfectly cast) and messiness, the characteristic of Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau), are only the beginning and somewhat superficial. As the story unfolds, we find there is a lot more to these men than simply neatness versus messiness.
Briefly, the story is really about Felix Ungar, who has to face an impending divorce from his wife Francis, who we never meet but is an important character throughout the story. On the verge of suicide, Ungar goes to the only place he knows: the apartment of Oscar Madison where a group of poker buddies hang out every so often. We learn that Ungar is not only a member of this "poker club" but the group knows what's happening to him and try, in their inept way, to help out. Madison figures the best way to help Ungar is to let him move in with him until his suicidal tendencies wear off.
Unfortunately for Madison, he doesn't know what he's getting himself into. Madison is a carefree happy-go-lucky if rather irresponsible slob who's refrigerator was last cleaned probably when Herbert Hoover was still in the White House. Madison's idea of serving snacks is grabbing moldy cheese and sticking them in between two pieces of bread, and then throwing the contents of a bag of chips on the table. On the other hand, he enjoys booze and women, in short having a good time.
Ungar is not only altogether different, he is diametrically opposite. He is not only an obsessive neatness nut that finds more joy in disinfecting the apartment than meeting women but he knows more than most women do about cooking and fine eating. At one point, he calls his ex-wife, not to talk about reconciling, but to get her recipe for meatloaf. At another moment, Ungar was going to spend the rest of the evening cutting cabbage for coleslaw. When Madison seems unimpressed, Ungar finally confesses he was only doing it for his roommate because he can't stand coleslaw. Who is this guy? But he has another endearing trait: Felix is also a hypochondriac. He obsesses about his health to the point where he makes strange noises in public places claiming he's helping his sinuses. He seems to have every health condition in the book. And if they made up more, Felix would probably have them. Ultimately, he is overly self-absorbed.
Running throughout the movie are references to marriage. At one point when Madison is trying to convince Ungar to move in, he says, "What do you want, a wedding ring?" But little does he know that it is not the neat guy who can't deal with the messy guy, but the other way around. Their friendship becomes an inadvertent hellish relationship. And the climax occurs when Oscar invites two lonely British sisters for a get-together with both comedic and tragic results. This is one of the best comedies of its type ever written and not to be missed, with superlative performances by Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon in roles that are hard to imagine better played by anyone else. It is unfortunate that writing of this caliber is sadly lacking from most comedies being produced today.

A hard to find film which coasts on the still pervasive mythology of Senator Joe McCarthy as a political demon king. Boyle (as Joe) gives a compelling but historically inaccurate portrayal of the Wisconsin Senator, the caricature McCarthy many take as the real one. Meredith, as wily Army lawyer Joseph Welch, who outsmarted McCarthy at the Army hearings in 1954, is very good, as always.
In fact, McCarthy and Cohn were quite right in worrying about the appalling security situation in the Army, and the 1954 Army hearings became enmeshed in the smokescreen used by the Army to deflect the investigation away from their security failings, which the committee were investigating, by counter-charging that McCarthy and Cohn were trying to get favours for their staffer, David Schine, whilst in the service.
The film is self satisfied agenda driven polemic, based in the pervasive myths which have passed for the truth with many people for decades-that the "red scare" was essentially phony and McCarthy, HUAC etc were always blasting away at the wrong targets, being no more than lying, career ruining publicity hounds, who were trampling over the constitutional rights of startled innocent liberals, who were accused of being security risks/communists.
People who know little about the matter still feel confident in repeating misinformation on McCarthy and the "red scare" to this day-Clooney's Murrow hagiography is an example. The misinformation is pervasive, no wonder people have swallowed it. A recent obit of Budd Schulberg in the serious left wing UK newspaper "The Guardian" headlined that the Hollywood writer "named names" "to McCarthy"- perpetuating the lie that McCarthy "investigated" Hollywood as head of HUAC-the truth being that McCarthy was never even a member of HUAC and he had little interest in the politics of Hollywood types-his investigations were confined almost exclusively to arms of the US government.
The mythology about the "red scare" being baseless is now completely exploded by recently opened Soviet and US government documents, if anything McCarthy and co underestimated the sheer scale of Soviet and fellow traveller infiltration in the US, but decades of public misinformation about this period will be hard to correct.
One day maybe some really brave Hollywood soul will make a movie telling the truth about how many American men and women clandestinely aided the mass murderer Stalin, and worked to impose his vicious system of government on the western world, giving an accurate account maybe of Joe McCarthy's career-but I won't hold my breath. Till then, we have this mythical, drunken lying scoundrel of popular imagination so familiar in the media...."Tail gunner Joe".