|
Movies like people can grow creaky with age. They get
a few more lines, move a little slower than you remember
and sometimes aren’t quite as entertaining as in days past.
“Grumpy Old Men” luckily has aged quite well like the stars
of the movie the late great Jack Lemmon and late great Walter
Matthau. This wasn’t the first paring of the this dynamic
duo they had appeared in “The odd Couple”, “The Fortune
Cookie”, “The Front Page”, “Buddy Buddy” and the sequel
to this film. While I wouldn’t call this a first tier classic
movie, it’s enjoyable to see Lemon, Matthau and Ann -Margaret
do their best work in ages in this movie. ***
Lemmon and Matthau play long time rivals and widowers
who vie for the attention of Ariel Truax (Ann-Margaret).
These two try to one-up each other with gags that work well
because of our talented actors. ---
Image & Sound:
The film starts out looking pretty bad. The image was
soft and it looked like the transfer was done by someone
who had never done before. Luckily, things improved and
the image quality improves but never hits the visual high
point of say “The 40 Year Old Virgin”. Colors including
skin tones vary quite a bit over the course of the film.
I’d like to say the film looks good for its age but it’s
not really that old for what is an inconsistent looking
transfer at best. The entertainment value of the film itself
has aged a bit better than the look of the film itself.
***
Audio sounds quite good with a nice lossless transfer
in 5.1 TrueHD. ---
|
