Duplex

Plot synopsis:
Alex Rose (Ben Stiller) and Nancy Kendricks (Drew Barrymore) are a young, professional, married New York couple in search of their dream home. When they finally find the perfect Brooklyn brownstone, they are giddy with anticipation. The duplex is a dream come true, complete with multiple fireplaces, except for one thing: Mrs. Connelly (Eileen Essell), the old lady who lives on the rent-controlled top floor. Assuming she is elderly and ill, they take the apartment.
However, they soon realize that Mrs. Connelly is in fact an energetic senior who enjoys watching her television at top volume day and night and rehearsing in a brass band. As a writer, Alex is attempting to finish his novel against a looming deadline. However, he is interrupted daily by Mrs. Connelly's numerous demands and requests, and what begins as a nuisance quickly escalates into an all-out war. Alex and Nancy try to get Mrs. Connelly to move out, but she refuses. Next, they try to file a noise complaint against her, but discover that she has already gone to the police first and filed a harassing complaint against them. Mrs. Connelly soon turns all of Alex and Nancy's friends against them by play-acting as the "poor, innocent, old lady" and makes it appear that the young couple are out to harm her.
When Nancy loses her job and Alex misses his deadline (all because of the old lady's antics) the pair are trapped at home together with Mrs. Connelly with no place to go. Their rage turns to homicidal fantasy as they plot ways to get rid of their manipulative, no-good neighbor. After peace overtures and a break-in lead to nothing, Alex and Nancy decide to hire a hitman, named Chick (James Remar), to kill her. However, his asking price for doing the hit is $25,000. Unable to initially come up with the money, Alex approaches his friend and fellow writer, Coop, to ask for a loan, but is rudely rebuffed. Desperate and needing the money in two days, they sell almost every possession they own to pay Chick who will do the hit on Christmas Eve. Chick does break into Mrs. Connelly's apartment as planned, but fails to kill her when she defends herself with her speargun by shooting him in the shoulder, forcing him to flee, and the couple in fact have to rescue the old woman when the struggle results in a fire in her apartment.
Accepting defeat, Alex and Nancy decide to evict themselves, but find out that the old woman has died right when they leave. Alex and Nancy, now with no jobs, friends, or money left, move away where they contemplate their strange encounters. But here the audience learns in a climatic plot twist that the realtor of the duplex, Kenneth (Harvey Fierstein) (revealed to be Mrs. Connelly's son) and the ill-tempered NYPD Officer Dan (Robert Wisdom) (Kenneth's gay lover) who had frequently harassed and distrusted the couple and always sided with Mrs. Connelly in her arguments with Alex and Nancy, and Mrs. Connelly herself (who is not in fact dead) have been doing this to others. This wicked and unethical trio have been running a mean-spirited, real-estate scam for several years: Kenneth sells the ground floor apartment only to good-natured young couples, then Mrs. Connelly, aided by the corrupt Officer Dan, harasses and destroys the young couple's lives, eventually forcing them to move out, and then faking Mrs. Connelly's own death so that the couple will never return and leaving Mrs. Connelly, Kenneth and Dan to collect and live off of the sales commission from the next occupants that buy the ground floor apartment. Alex and Nancy were Mrs. Connelly and her son's latest victims among so many.
At the conclusion, it is revealed in a voice-over by Alex that he and Nancy relocated to the Bronx. Like all of the other couples that the trio scammed, they never saw Mrs. Connelly or returned to Brooklyn again, nor did they ever find out about the scam they were the victims of. While Mrs. Connelly, Kenneth and Officer Dan continue their scam by targeting the next friendly young couple that moves into the ground-floor apartment right after Alex and Nancy move out, Alex used his unpleasant experience of living there as inspiration for writing his next book, titled "Duplex", which became a best-selling novel, saving Alex and Nancy from their life of poverty, and giving the film a semi-happy ending.

Tags: bleak, cult, comedy

Review:
In Danny De Vito's "Duplex," Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore play a young couple who buy a "dream apartment" in Brooklyn whose amenities include everything two upwardly mobile yuppies could possibly want: ample space, solid wood floors, three glorious fireplaces, and, above all, a quiet environment where Alex, a budding novelist, can spend his days writing in uninterrupted peace and quiet.
The writer Alex Rose (Ben Stiller) and his beloved wife Nancy Kendricks (Drew Barrymore), who works in an advertisement agency, want to buy a house and cannot afford an apartment in Manhattan, but they find a wonderful old duplex in Brooklyn for living.
Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore show a great chemistry, but Eileen Essel "steals the show" in the role of a sweet & nasty old lady.
i think that this is an entertaining and very funny comedy from Danny DeVito, Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore are well cast, but the real star of the film is Eileen Essel as the old lady.Stiller and Barrymore are a married couple who buy a duplex in Brooklyn, they then find out that there is an old tenant who lives upstairs, she then starts to cause havoc on their personal lives by playing the TV all night and getting Stiller to do her chores all day, instead of letting him write his new book.
Then it gets too much for them and they decide it is time to kill her.There are some very funny slapstick comedy moments in this film, especially the scene where Stiller and Barrymore are giving the old lady C.P.R,There is also a nice twist at the end of the film.Danny De Vito decides to narrate the beginning and end of the story, Overall a nice little comedy with some very good comic performances by the main cast, some very funny jokes and a good script, 8/10.
Trust me, after you watch this movie, you'll be feeling the same way, too.And I suppose that's part of the success of "Duplex" -- like other DeVito movies, it takes a seemingly appalling plot (see "Throw Momma From the Train") and, by advancing and developing its characters, and drawing us into their conflicts, has us relate to them.
Stiller and Barrymore worked well together and had a good chemistry, and it was a nice surprise to watch a comedy without too many attempts at silly slapstick.There are very few laugh out loud moments, but I was smiling on a number of occasions.
Instead of finding her in breach of contract of a loud noise level ordinance, he go through the great lengths of getting her out, to include booby-trapping her house and hiring a hit-man (but I guess that's funnier.) This movie has some "cute" moments with the old lady, but in the end it leaves you empty..
Any way the movie did have something going on all the time so it is not boring (yet, you still don't feel good), Ben and Drew makes a great couple.
Depending on the point of view the ending may bring some consolidation to the otherwise crappy content, but for me the only consolation was the relief I got when the movie actually ended.It's not like I couldn't enjoy a dark comedy (Very Bad Things for example is a quite good one), but since Duplex offers practically no plot to follow nor characters to identify yourself with, and the jokes are mostly artificial, predictable, unfunny and even disgusting at times, and since the only real substance is the misfortune of the main characters, there is really no way I could recommend this to anyone..
Heard it sucked, like a whole lot, was surprised it was actually somewhat funny at the beginning, became more and more ludacris, stupid, pointless and uninventive, failed miserably to redo the great "War Of The Roses", yet another one of those stupid stupid American Hollywood movies that had no business being made the first time because they seem they were made up as the film crew went along.
The very ending is kind of nice though, but sadly it just shows the lost potential of the story and situationBen Stiller is getting kind of old in his role of the guy who takes crap from everybody, Drew Barrymore I never liked, and as for the old lady-she just can't act.Crap's what it is, not recommended unless you like movies like "Scary Movie 3".
Seriously - while there are some mildly funny moments in `Duplex', its overall effect is genuinely unpleasant.Ben Stiller wanders through his usual man-about-to-explode routine, while Drew Barrymore is entirely wasted in a colourless role that could have been played by anyone with half her talent.
Poor old Danny DeVito.Duplex is a perfect little comedy with great performances by Stiller and Barrymore, but even greater performance from Eileen Essel as the cute little old Irish Catholic who lives upstairs.Unfortunately this movie is already disappearing from theaters, it really deserves to have a long run and to be praised because it is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny - something which is rare these days.One could blame the timing of the release what with a surprisingly good fall line up of movies, but I think it was simply the fact that the promotion for the movie basically consisted of Danny Devito appearing on daytime talk shows - Regis and Kelly's regular audience does not match the demographic who will enjoy this film.
To my mind they should have had Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore on late night talk shows and waited a few weeks until they could get the both of them presenting SNL.In short, this is a great movie, badly promoted and sadly will not get the return or the praise it deserves.
I love Drew Barrymore to death, but even she can't make this black comedy any better; uncharacteristically weak, neither she nor Ben Stiller nor any of the other cast members inexplicably involved with this clumsy farce (Harvey Fierstein, Eileen Eissel, James Remar, etc) make it a worthwhile addition to Danny DeVito's directorial CV - which is thematically similar to his "Throw Momma From The Train," except that was actually funny.
But as well as making you wonder why they don't try to kill her sooner than they do, "Duplex" also goes too far in every direction from slapstick to plotting - the movie becomes less funny and more unbelievable as it progresses, with plot points telegraphed so far in advance they may as well have been written on the poster, and a final scene that's particularly hard not to foresee.I'd be lying if I said there weren't a few laughs to be had (and I agree with the guy who pointed out Drew's appearance in a see-through shirt at one point), but all in all "Duplex" comes across as a bad TV movie that somehow got upgraded to a cinema feature; every time the Irish woman's TV started showing "Hawaii Five-O," I begged to be watching that instead.
The story is good, though the movie is like "throw momma from the train" (with danny devito as an actor), but then in the present instead of 1987.
DUPLEX (2003) **1/2 Ben Stiller, Drew Barrymore, Eileen Essel, Harvey Fierstein, Justin Theroux, Amber Valletta, Maya Rudolph, Wallace Shawn, James Remar, Robert Wisdom, Cheryl Klein.So-so high concept comedy about a young Manhattan based couple (Stiller and Barrymore) who decide to buy a wonderful Brooklyn brownstone except for one hitch: the elderly tenant (Essel, a fine comic turn, in this her big screen debut!) who proves to be a Granny From Hell making their lives miserable with the final attempt to be taking her out (literally).
Most laughs come from accident, argument, or anxious ambience(along with the aforementioned slapstick; and great performances by the three main stars) (side note: Ben Stiller has a streak of playing roles that keep him in constant disaster(ie museum/focker franchises/heartbreak etc)- this is his best performance)Give it a shot, you may be among the great group of people who love this film!
Unbeknownst to them, their neighbor is pretty determined to keep her residence, so they'll have to work hard to achieve their goal.I like the whole idea of this movie and thanks to some good acting, a lot of very funny situations come to life.
I liked Drew Barrymore and Ben Stiller in the film, they gave good humorous performances and they worked well together, had pretty good on screen chemistry.
I'm actually quite shocked that this movie is as underrated as it is!This movie has a simple but interesting plot which is: A couple named Alex and Nancy move into a duplex in Brooklyn New York with and old lady who lives on the second floor above them.
This old lady seems kind and innocent at first impressions, but pretty soon her constant demands and accidents ruin Alex and Nancy's attempts at having the perfect home.This is a very well done Black comedy movie with some slap stick humour from time to time (don't let the slap stick comedy put you off from watching this, it's done effectively in my opinion but this is probably the reason why this movie is so overlooked including the simplistic plot).
You really begin to hate the old lady very quickly too, which is fantastic for a movie like this and you really care about Alex and Nancy's intentions to get her out of the duplex no matter what the costs are or how they are going to do it, this is partly where this movie succeeds.There is also a fantastic plot twist at the end which is actually very impressive for such an underrated movie.
A Good Movie That Would Have Been Even Better Without The Unnecessary Plot Twist At The End. Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore are both likable actors who are usually fun to watch - and that's no less the case in "Duplex." As Alex and Nancy, they play characters who have just bought a new home.
That was a very funny scene, and from that point on the movie becomes increasingly frenetic in its pace, and even though they're plotting the killing of a little old lady, Alex and Nancy become very sympathetic characters.
The twist did catch me by surprise (so I suppose it was effective in that regard) but to me it didn't work as an effective way of ending the story, with the end result being that a movie that was at times very funny left me with a bit of a negative feeling.
I mean a year prior he directed the Robin Williams mess Death to Smootchy, but at least Duplex manages to surpass that wreck.The plot: Alex (Stiller) and Nancy (Barrymore) are a couple looking for a house in New York.
I expected DeVito to have a bit more sense of real comedy rather than getting the cheapest laughs from the cheapest jokes.After the thirty minute mark and as we slowly approach the hour mark we begin to realize Duplex keeps spitting the same tiresome and boring jokes we've seen so many times before.
I was hoping for more destruction of their personal lives and property.Duplex is a one-note comedy, and while it opens rather promising introducing likable characters, the overall chemistry between Stiller and Barrymore isn't strong enough to believe and doesn't fit the requirements to sustain a ninety minute run time.
It isn't the worst I've seen, but it truly is far from any level of good humor.Starring: Ben Stiller, Drew Barrymore, and Eileen Essell.
These can be used to sum up the story of Duplex, directed by comedian/actor Danny DeVito and featuring the first time pairing of comedians Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore as the husband and wife suburban couple who through an animated opening credit sequence, go through property after property looking for the perfect place to set up their home, which should also double up as a home office for Stiller's Alex Rose, an up and coming writer due to complete his next novel without having to write at Starbucks.Thanks to their housing agent, they settle for the titular duplex, which seemed like a great idea for their housing plans and one that's within their budget, a good deal even though it comes with a caveat that they cannot throw out the existing tenant, an old lady called Mrs Connelly (Eileen Essell) who stays upstairs and well, pays the rent.
Both Stiller and Barrymore provide good comic timing especially in their individual scenes (well, someone has to bring home the bacon) when their characters get stuck with "entertaining" the bothersome old lady whose benign requests usually turn out to the contrary.But the scene stealer would of course be Eileen Essell as Mrs Connelly with her playing both the fragile old Irish lady who is more than meets the eye, a force to be reckoned with beneath the aged exterior, capable of tugging at your conscience and making you feel guilty should you not accede to her gentle pleas, which almost always come laced with sarcasm, or the nitty gritty that makes you feel bad.
Convincingly playing her role without which this film would probably have not been able to make us laugh with or at Stiller and Barrymore's characters as they get stuck in their predicament which comes with a predictable twist at the end.
The actual jokes mostly consist of pedestrian situational comedy (Ben Stiller clumsily breaking into an apartment and always staying at the verge of being caught, that sort of thing), but it's all pretty well-acted so it still makes me laugh.
Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore make such a good looking couple in "Duplex".Danny Devito also directs the film and adds so much humor and energy into the film that will have you laughing on your sides.My friend gave me 2 choices between watching this movie and "The Hot Chick".He told me that "The Hot Chick" was really funny but he also told me that "Duplex" was also really funny.So I told him "Duplex" and I have to say that I was quite surprised at how funny and entertaining this movie was.The performances by Stiller and Barrymore were simply wonderful and I'm glad that Mr. Devito chose these 2 brilliant actors and put them in such delightful roles.There's also Eilleen Essell's performance, who plays the elderly person who ruins Stiller's and Barrymore's lives when they movie into a big house and have to share it with her.Although she did actually do some things to the couple that actually got me mad, I really thought that she was just a sweet person who obviously needed a lot of help around her house.I also need to mention that I think that this film is very underrated.How can something like this get a 5.7?
first of all this my first comment ever in IMDb , so please do not judge my comment tightly, i just came here to say come on people this movie is not so boring or silly as many comments here said before , its a very light and funny comedy , it does not end up without blowing your breath from laughs and the situations are hilarious, i loved Adam and Drew, they got perfect chemistry in between...
After get married ALEX ROSE (Ben Stiller) and NANCY KENDRICKS (Drew Barrymore) like any couple decide to buy a house for living together.
Like in other recent movies he does the main role very well, but there're also very nice performances by Drew Barrymore and the old lady, Eileen Essell, MRS.
CONNELLY in the movie.DUPLEX is a nice comedy with an entertaining plot and some good laughs, most of them because of Stiller's character (but MRS.
Danny DeVito produced a great entertaining film with Ben Stiller, (Alex Rose) and Drew Barrymore, (Nancy Kendricks) who play the role of an unmarried couple who want to find a nice quite apartment where Alex can write his books.
Not That Bad. Duplex (2003, Dir. Danny DeVito) Alex Rose and Nancy Kendricks are a young couple who believe they have found their perfect home to start a family in.
An upwardly mobile couple (Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore) finds the perfect place to live, a duplex in Brooklyn.
Then I saw it...(shudders).What it's supposed to do is have the audience turn on Drew Barrymore and Ben Stiller's characters once they decide to whack the annoying old lady living upstairs.
Duplex (2003) Ben Stiller, Drew Barrymore, Eileen Essel, Harvey Fierstein, Justin Theroux, James Remar, Robert Wisdom, Swoosie Kurtz, Wallace Shawn, D: Danny DeVito.
this movie tries to get you to feel extreme pity for the main characters (Ben and Drew) like it does in Meet the Parents, but it just plain fails.the twist ending is weak and so lame.i blame it on Danny DeVito..
This movie was over expectations.Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore give great and very funny acting skills in this movie.
It's more like "Throw Momma From the Train" in an apartment.The movie has several HILARIOUS episodes dealing with Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore as they try to deal with and plot to kill their upstairs tenant.
[One of those times where you laugh so hard and loud you miss the next 30-60 seconds of dialogue]  The performances were great, especially the old lady and Ben Stiller.
Drew Barrymore seemed to be miscast at first (or at least not a good match for Ben Stiller), but when things started picking up, she played evil pretty well (thank you, years of recklessness).The end of the movie was a let down of sorts, as the ending was sort of abrupt.
This movie was like "Madhouse" and "Home Alone" with an old lady playing Macauly Culkin.Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore play the young couple Alex Rose and Nancy Kendricks.
Alright, I know you're thinking, man Ben Stiller, Drew Barrymore, and directed by Danny DeVito!
The woman who plays the old Irish lady Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore are trying to get rid of is actually really funny.
Alex Rose (Ben Stiller) and Nancy Kendricks (Drew Barrymore) play the cute couple who have just bought their first home together - a duplex.