Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

The Sunshine Boys Blu-ray Movie Review

Enter! the Gag Men

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 16, 2015

Almost twenty years before he became a Grumpy Old Man, comic treasure Walter Matthau played even older and grumpier as one half of an estranged vaudeville team in The Sunshine Boys, the filmed version of Neil Simon's bookend to The Odd Couple. Matthau's feuding partner wasn't his usual foil, Jack Lemmon, but a stoically deadpan George Burns, returning to the big screen after an absence of thirty-six years. When he accepted the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance, Burns declared that, for good luck, he would wait another thirty-six years before making another picture. (He didn't.)

Screen chemistry is a matter of luck (or possibly fate). After The Sunshine Boys finished its successful Broadway run, the film was initially cast with two former vaudevillians, Red Skelton and Jack Benny, but Skelton dropped out (various reasons have been claimed). After considering several replacements, including Phil Silvers, whose audition is included in the extras, producer Ray Stark and director Herb Ross settled on Matthau. Then Benny had to withdraw due to severe illness (he died in December 1974) but recommended his close friend Burns as a replacement. The accidental pairing clicked, and both actors were nominated for Oscars, but Matthau lost the Leading Actor statue to Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Simon lost the screenwriting Oscar but won the Writer's Guild Award.

Among Neil Simon's works, The Sunshine Boys is one of the most filmed. In Germany it has been adapted for television an astonishing four times (go figure), and twice in America, most famously in 1996 with Peter Falk taking Matthau's role and Woody Allen stepping in for Burns. There's something oddly fascinating about the story's combination of antic, off-the-wall comedy with the heart-tug of watching two elderly men make each other miserable after a lifetime of bringing laughter to others. Youth-obsessed PR departments don't know how to market such a catalog title, which is no doubt why the Blu-ray comes to us from the Warner Archive Collection.

The comedy team of Lewis and Clark—and yes, those are meant to be their real names—had a brilliant and successful career for forty-three years, dating back to vaudeville. But eleven years ago, they split up because Al Lewis (Burns) wanted to retire. Willy Clark (Matthau) has never forgiven his old partner, and they haven't spoken since. Indeed, according to Clark, he already wasn't speaking to Lewis, only to his alter ego on stage. In Clark's account, Lewis was a genius at comedy and a disaster as a person.

Not that Willy Clark is an exemplar of sweetness and light. Cantankerous, whiny and self-absorbed, Clark is a constant challenge to his nephew, Ben (Richard Benjamin), who is also his agent and has to endure Uncle Willy's calls at all hours of the day and night. As the film opens, Ben has wangled his uncle an audition for a commercial for Frumpies potato chips, but Clark has confused the address and gone to the opposite end of town. His exchanges with a garage mechanic (played by a young F. Murray Abraham), as the elderly comic keeps insisting that there must be auditions happening somewhere on the premises, are a perfect introduction to the exasperating world according to Willy Clark.

The elegantly simple plot of The Sunshine Boys revolves around Ben's increasingly desperate efforts to persuade the estranged partners to reunite for an ABC special celebrating the history of American comedy, for which each of them will earn $5000. Clark needs the money and, more than that, he needs to work again. Lewis, who lives with his daughter (Carol Arthur) and grandchildren in New Jersey, seems to be interested in the gig for fun, although he's hard to read (which may be part of what drove Clark crazy). It seems like an easy enough task for two old-timers who consider themselves "professionals", but every detail leads to conflict, whether it's dressing rooms, the arrangement of a rehearsal space, an article in Variety or the opening words of a sketch ("Enter!" vs. "Come in!"). Clark clearly has scores to settle, and part of the genius of Burns's performance is that you're never entirely sure whether Lewis is a victim or a skilled and subtle provocateur.

When we finally get to see the signature "doctor sketch" for which the team is famous—in a run-through for the TV special that's never completed— the bit is dated and not particularly funny, but that's beside the point. Whatever their differences, Lewis and Clark share the common trait of being so thoroughly infected with the comedic bug that every interaction becomes a show, even if it's only for an audience of one. Maybe they really are old and losing their marbles. Or maybe each of them has turned senility into a comic shtick, playing off people's expectations of how old codgers behave. Lewis' repetitions of statements he made just a moment ago are always spoken with a watchful eye, as if the cagey devil is waiting to see how his listener reacts. And Clark's moments of confusion alternate with fits of lucidity that seem far too well timed to be random. It's as if he chooses forgetfulness when it suits him. (He explains to his nephew that his inability to remember the name "Frumpies" for the potato chip commercial is because the name isn't a funny word—the question of which words are funny and which are not being a favorite subject among comics and comedy writers, particularly the group that wrote for Sid Cesar, which is where Neil Simon learned his craft.)

The Sunshine Boys is one of Simon's best comedies, but part of what makes it so memorable is the undercurrent of melancholy that counterpoints the laughter ever more powerfully as the film progresses. Both Lewis and Clark are very much aware of the limited time they have left. The first thing Clark turns to in his daily copy of Variety is the obituaries, and a running joke involves the ex-partners' inability to agree on just what minor show business job was held by the latest deceased. Perhaps the saddest part of the film, however, is that these two grizzled veterans have made it this far, only to find that their closest and most enduring relationship is with a hated rival whose very presence creates combustion. Comedians are notoriously competitive, and while a certain amount of competition may be healthy in a partnership, Lewis and Clark have taken it too far. After forty-three years of knocking audiences dead, they're in danger of killing each other.

The Sunshine Boys Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Sunshine Boys was shot by David M. Walsh, who would re-unite with director Herb Ross and writer Neil Simon for The Goodbye Girl and California Suite. The Warner Archive Collection has created a new master for this Blu-ray release, sourced from a recently generated interpositive. The results are beautifully textured and richly colored, providing a wonderful display of the film's Oscar-nominated art direction. Willy Clark's apartment, littered with show biz memorabilia, can be seen in all its dilapidated glory, in contrast to the tidy suburban home where Al Lewis resides with his daughter. The bright lights and over-illuminated soundstage of the TV studio expose the overdone makeup on Lewis and Clark, in contrast to their normal appearance in the daylight of the New York streets. Clark's first appearance as he walks past George M. Cohan's statue in Times Square is like a page from a history book recording a bygone era. The exceptional detail in these and many other sequences helps create a believable world in which the extreme behavior of the two battling ex-partners is all the more absurd.

The film's natural grain pattern is well rendered and appears undisturbed by untoward digital manipulation. Consistent with WAC's usual practice, the disc has been mastered with a high average bitrate of 35.00 Mbps, ensuring an uncompromised encode.

The Sunshine Boys Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Sunshine Boys' original mono track has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, with identical left and right channels. The track is remarkably lively when you consider that the film has no score except for occasional bits of source music. Its "score" is the rhythm of comedy, and Matthau in particular hits so many notes across such a wide range that he might as well be his own orchestra. The dialogue is always clear, and there are subtly mixed sound effects appropriate to each locale.

The Sunshine Boys Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2004 DVD of The Sunshine Boys.

• Commentary with Actor Richard Benjamin: The best parts of Benjamin's commentary are his recollections of Burns and Matthau and his reflections on the curious life of an actor, in which the opportunity for career revival can appear out of nowhere at any moment, even when you're eighty, as was Burns when he came out of retirement to play Lewis. Otherwise, after the passage of nearly thirty years, Benjamin doesn't seem to remember much about shooting the film, and he frequently pauses just to watch and enjoy.



• The Lion Roars Again (480i; 1.33:1; 16:56): This featurette about the 1975 MGM International Press Enclave includes an extensive segment on The Sunshine Boys.



• Jack Benny/Walter Matthau Makeup Test (480i; 1.37:1; 10:34): Silent footage that, according to the initial slate, was shot on Sept. 18, 1974.



• Phil Silvers Screen Test (480i; 1.37:1; 3:25): It is unclear when this test was shot, but it must have been before Matthau was cast.



• Theatrical Trailer (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 3:55): The trailer includes behind-the-scenes footage and a special tribute at the Friars' Club.

The Sunshine Boys Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The competitive spirit wasn't limited to the fictional characters. In his commentary, Richard Benjamin relates how George Burns reported to the set with the entire script memorized, prompting Matthau to joke that the eighty-year-old wanted to make the rest of them look bad. Even though Al Lewis is the more contained of the two partners, Burns's portrayal has a zest to it that bespeaks the actor's enthusiasm for this unexpected opportunity to revive his career. He lands every line with the precision timing well known to fans of the old Burns & Allen TV show. Burns and Matthau make it easy to believe that their characters were comedy legends, and just as easy to believe that they drove each other crazy. Highly recommended.