Out to Sea Reviews

Every joke looms large on the horizon. Every wisecrack is delivered in super-slow motion: Director Martha Coolidge has fashioned the cinematic equivalent of a hearing aid. Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon reprise the kind of roles they've been doomed to repeat ever since GRUMPY OLD MEN revitalized that vintage ODD COUPLE chemistry and made them box-office contenders. Matthau stars as Charlie, a slouchy, lovable track hound who always bets the long shots and consequently owes his bookie $3,000. Lemmon is Herb, Charlie's nattily dressed, widowed brother-in-law: He lets the temporarily broke but ever crafty Charlie talk him into skipping town aboard a luxury cruise ship. What Herb doesn't realize about the all-expenses-paid trip to Mexico is that Charlie has signed them on as employees -- dance instructors, to be precise. No doubt hilarity was meant to ensue as our golden boys try and dance their way out of a heap of trouble -- mostly involving the ship's tyrannical cruise director (Brent Spiner) and two fetching single gals (Dyan Cannon and Gloria De Haven) -- but the movie's level of cynicism is nothing short of jaw-dropping. Banking on billing alone to guarantee an audience, nobody involved bothered to invest this dismal comedy with a single remotely fresh or funny element. What the filmmakers -- and shame on you, Martha Coolidge -- fail to realize is that any audience old enough to go to a movie because Jack Lemmon is in it is also old enough to remember him in some of the most sophisticated American comedies ever made. They may be elderly, but they're not stupid.