Buddy Buddy (1981)

The viewing of Buddy Buddy caps off a personal bucket list item, it was the last of Billy Wilder's feature directorial efforts I had yet see, and ironically the only one of his films to have had its first release during my life time. Buddy Buddy doesn't have a great reputation critically, or at least didn't on its first release, and even the director and his stars didn't think much of it. Based on the French black comedy L'emmerdeur, Buddy Buddy see's the action relocated to and filmed on location in Riverside, California, which in the early 80's appeared to be semi rural (pretty confident its not now).

Appropriately this a buddy comedy staring Wilder stalwarts. with Walter Matthau playing an expert assassin hired by the mob to kill a grand jury witness (the plan is to kill him sniper style from the hotel across the street when he is being escorted into the courthouse), who keeps being interrupted by the suicidal television censor staying in the next room, played of course by Jack Lemmon. Lemmon is in town to try to reconcile with his wife (Paula Prentiss) who has left him for a sex therapist played by Klaus Kinski ( potentially making this film pretty valuable in an international game of 'the six degrees of Kevin Beacon').

To prevent Lemmon's suicide attempts from drawing unwanted police scrutiny of his crows nest, Matthau reluctantly finds himself enlisted in the cause of saving Lemmon's marriage. It's not a great film but I rather enjoyed it, I thought it was funny and really liked seeing Matthau and Lemmon together again in what is all but a lost film. Like some of Wilder's later work this old 'studio system' director seem to really enjoy the freedom to show nudity and use bad language, he doesn't do this a lot but its enough that I find it slightly jarring, Wilder was a master of subtlety and I think his work suffers a little bit for not being constrained and having to play around those constraints. Better then I had anticipated it being, the Wilder map-cap formula most associated with his 1960's work is on full display and I had a good time watching this. This movie should be better remembered. ***