Review
DUPLEX
Starring Ben Stiller, Drew Barrymore and Eileen Essel
Directed by Danny DeVito
Now showing
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God, yuppies can be so selfish. First they buy a house and then they think that they can just oust the sweet old lady who lives upstairs. Thank heavens for rent control.
That’s the creaky foundation for Duplex, Danny DeVito’s lightweight comedy in which a couple of neurotic New York newlyweds (Drew Barrymore and Ben Stiller) buy a character home in Brooklyn, only to discover that the place comes with its own built-in tenant, a little old Irish granny (Eileen Essel) who’s got to be pushing 105. But, heck, the youngsters won’t have to kick her out – they’ll just wait until she kicks off. Listen! Upstairs! Is that the sound of slippers shuffling off this mortal hardwood coil?
Of course, this being a "comedy" by DeVito, the senior citizen turns out to have a lot of spring left in her elderly step – and she’s a nightmarish neighbour to boot. The premise holds about as much water as a leaky roof, but that’s not to say the film is entirely without laughs. As she turns their lives into homeowners’ hell, the geriatric antagonist provokes imaginative revenge fantasies from her frustrated landlords – Stiller’s vicious assertion that he’d like to dice her up into tiny pieces is one of the few genuinely funny lines in the entire picture.
More of that callous, tasteless humour could have made Duplex a great deal more tolerable, but as in DeVito’s previous directorial effort, Death to Smoochy, the black comedy is too often toned down to a muted grey. Factor in DeVito’s predictable slapstick set pieces, and it’s about time somebody in Hollywood served the little homunculus with an eviction notice – his lease on this medium has expired. |
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