The Out-of-Towners (1970)

The Out-of-Towners (1970)

7/10

Starring

Jack Lemmon

Sandy Dennis

Directed by Arthur Hiller

The don’t come any faster or crazier than The Out-of-Towners. This 1970 film has two couples having an unbelievable bad day, which turned to a bad night and continued the day after. Even when you think it is over, their bad luck still ran through to the very end of the movie.

This comedy film was written by Neil Simon the man behind The Odd Couple franchise whose comic work is not just to make you laugh at the ridiculousness of what is happening, but the characters involved themselves.

The movie starts with a bang, it looked like something plain and simple, but the moment things start getting wrong you are left asking yourself, can things get any worse than this and they usually do. With George Kellerman (Jack Lemmon) wanting to sue everyone. Then we have his wife Gwen (Sandy Dennis) you watch this movie from the beginning to the end and you still cannot place her person.

The plot start with George and Gwen heading to the airport for their flight from Ohio to New York. George is being offered a job promotion there and he was heading for the interview. His desire is to get the job and move his family to New York with the hope for a better life.

He was always moving fast, rushing Gwen along and making it hard for her to get any meal or do anything she wants. He had planned every detail and wanted her ready for the lunch and dinner plans he had made for them.

Things started to go wrong when the plane was finding it hard to land in New York. George starts loosing his cool in the plane because he the interview is at 9:00am the next day. Finally they landed, but not in New York, in Boston. Now George must find a way to get from Boston to New York via train, a fit that was just a mountain for him and his wife to scale.

They get to New York to discover that, their luggage has been lost by the airline and their hotel room had been given out because they didn’t call for them to hold their reservations. It didn’t stop there for these two, as they now have no accommodation, at one time had to wrestle a dog for food, were chased by an officer for being suspected pedophiles, also they got mugged more than once.

The movie is fun and I can safely say that it aged well. Some of the occurrences in the movie were in tune with the happenings in New York at that time. Take a dose of this movie, you will be glad you did.