The Apartment is yet another older movie called a comedy that I didn't find funny

* * * (out of 5)

Hmmmm. I have had this debate going with my Game Night friends for about 3 years now. I say that almost every great movie comedy came out AFTER 1973. I say '73, because in '74 Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein came out which have to be considered the springboards for all funny movies after. Monty Python's Holy Grail also came out that year, but since I have never seen it in its entirety I cannot bestow it the hallowed place that YF and BS have in my heart.

But to be fair, I looked up the Top 500 nominees for the final Top 100 Comedy list that the American Film Institute came up with a few years ago. Of those 500, I've seen 220. Not even half of the movie comedies on the list and almost all came out before my 1973 deadline. But as I whittle the list down my theory is getting stronger and stronger. Number 220, The Apartment is the latest example.

It's a good movie. Well played, well written and interesting. It's 2 hours long and the time goes by at a pretty good pace. But Funny? A weasel accountant (Jack Lemmon) trying to climb the corporate ladder let's the married middle managers ahead of him use his apartment as a pad for their trysts with various secretaries and switchboard operators in the company. When one of the girls decides to try and kill herself on Christmas Eve in his place, he has to spend the next few days nursing her back to emotional and physical health. And he has to almost forcibly remove one of his bosses from using his apartment for an affair on Christmas Day. I'm not saying that the filmmakers play these things for laughs, but where's the humor?

The funniest thing in the whole movie is when Lemmon strains his spaghetti with a tennis racket. That there's comedy.

I should have known. I keep reading about these comedy masterpieces starring Lemmon and while many of them are good movies, they are not all that funny. Lemmon has one of the most depressing faces in movies. He always looks like he's three martinis away from a nervous breakdown. Even in a comedy like The Fortune Cookie, it starts off funny, but gets mired down in Lemmon nervosa. That sense of sadness permeates this entire movie.

Shirley MacLaine is the young elevator operator who pines for (get ready, you won't believe this) Fred MacMurray. I have no problem seeing MacMurray play a sleaze. I didn't totally buy his whole My Three Sons persona and thought his perfect role was as a backstabber in The Caine Mutiny. But "John Kerry" MacMurray as a kingmaker who sweeps young women off their feet only to crush them later? That's a bit much to buy.

Although there were some unintentionally funny moments in the film. Lemmon could rent a three-room apartment on 67th Street, a block from Central Park for $85 a month. Jewish men and women are all wishing each other Merry Christmas. The office Christmas parties were practically orgies. A high position, one worth having an office with a window was called an "administrative assistant." A woman who discussed having a dalliance with her boss could be fired immediately and no one worried about repercussions.

And finally, that this movie won Best Picture over: Inherit The Wind, Spartacus and Psycho. In fact those three movies weren't even nominated. That's the biggest joke of all.

The Freditor