MOVIE REVIEW

Duplex  (2003)

Starring: Ben Stiller, Drew Barrymore
Director: Danny DeVito

Rating: PG-13

Studio: Miramax

Release Date: 9.26.03

Review Posted: 9.26.03

Spoilers: Minor

By Sara M. Fetters

Dark "Duplex" Builds Familiar Laughs

Some movies have the stink of failure written all over them well before they hit theaters. Whether they had troubled productions, heinous script reviews leaked on the internet, numerous postponed release dates or star Rob Schneider, it’s not too often a movie can overcome poor advanced buzz and immerge relatively unscathed. It’s just not one of those things that happen in Hollywood.

But when it does, you can’t help but wonder what all the negative fuss was about in the first place. Take the new Danny DeVito directed comedy “Duplex” starring Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore. Miramax appears to want nothing to do with this film, postponing the release date for well over a year. Now they are finally releasing it with minimal fanfare on what is typically a date in September when studios try to quietly let their dogs out.

Why? While it isn’t great art by any stretch of the imagination, “Duplex” is still a reasonably funny and amusingly sinister black comedy. And while it isn’t up to the mythically classical standards of DeVito’s “Throw Mamma From the Train” and “The War of the Roses,” it’s still a creepily comical way to spend 90 or so minutes.

Young New Yorkers Alex (Ben Stiller) and Nancy (Drew Barrymore) have decided to take the big plunge into real estate. It’s time to get their first home, that perfect place where they can raise a family and toss a few throw rugs, and they think they’ve found it on a quiet little street in Brooklyn. It’s an adorable brownstone with three fireplaces, a huge vaulted ceiling and old-world flavor that’s perfectly romantic. It’s also a duplex with an elderly tenant named Mrs. Connelly (Eileen Essell) living upstairs, protected from eviction by New York’s ironclad rent control policies. No matter, because by the look of her she’s not going to last too much longer, and the moment she passes on the value of the home is going to skyrocket.

Now, we all know where this is going, don’t we? Little old Mrs. Connelly has no intention whatsoever of dying. If anything, the little old bitty is a hotbed of activity, what with her television on at full blast all night or a gaggle of elderly bugle players filling the house with their off-key practicing. Alex, who’s an up and coming writer facing a strict deadline to turn in his latest manuscript, finds himself to be at the woman’s mercy. Whether having to chaperone her around town on errands or dealing with plumbing issues, what with her incessant nagging and the nightly lack of sleep he’s never going to get his novel to the agent on time.

But it isn’t until the elderly woman’s incessant eccentricities lead to Nancy losing her job at a posh magazine do things really take a turn for the worst. Very bad things follow very bad things, and soon Alex and Nancy have come to the conclusion that the seemingly sweet and ostensibly kind Mrs. Connelly is in fact in league with Lucifer himself, intent on destroying the young couple’s lives. Faced with financial ruination, the duo is left with one recourse: Mrs. Connelly must die. As their home starts to fall apart around them and the old bird stubbornly refuses to kick the bucket, Alex and Nancy travel further and further past the deep end, treading into mutually psychotic waters as their sanity sails slowly away.

Call it “The Trouble with Harry” crossed with a pinch of “The Money Pit” and you’ve got the general idea for this droll black comedy. DeVito directs for more assuredly and with much less chutzpah than he did with his last effort, the train wreck “Death to Smoochy.” Here he leaves much of the flying camerawork and headache inducing editing alone, allowing cinematographer Anastas Michos (“The People vs. Larry Flynt”) the freedom to let his wide lens subtly showcase all of the interior shenanigans. The director also stages some his most giddy comedic set pieces since Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner found themselves dangling from a chandelier, Stiller and Barrymore falling face first into a pratfall with the best of them.

In fact, former “Simpsons” writer Larry Doyle’s script has probably the best ratio of giggles of any movie this year; it’s just sustaining them – or even producing a couple of guffaws – that he has problems with. While the writer definitely shows wit and intelligence, there still isn’t a shred of anything new going on here. I knew what was going to happen each step of the way up until the very end, the hoped-for surprise conclusion nothing to call home about. It is as if while writing he decided to, not so much take the teeth out of the film, but to dull them down to a rounded tip. There’s also a heavy reliance on bathroom humor that’s particularly misplaced, more suited for a National Lampoon farce than it is here.

The cast is uniformly excellent, though, with Stiller and Barrymore sharing a sweet, intoxicating chemistry that’s completely beguiling. Even better, once they both start to realize that they share ghoulish fantasies in regards to Mrs. Connelly, the duo impart a sycophantic melding of the minds that’s at once sweetly calming just as much as it perversely disturbs. But where Stiller trots out many of the tics and mannerisms we’ve seen before and come to expect from him (Greg from “Meet the Parents” comes most readily to mind), Barrymore comes on like a blooming sunflower who’s seeds just happen to be laced with cyanide. She revels going into Nancy’s nether regions, a pertinacious tinge of evil resting just beneath her ruby-red smile. Harvey Fierstein and Wallace Shawn also make indelible impressions, upping the laugh meter just a tad during their brief appearances.

All of that said, “Duplex” would never work anywhere near as well as it does without the presence of Essell. A veteran actress of the stage, she’s the movie’s true star, her delicate Irish lilt setting the film afire. At once the epitome of the kind, elderly next neighbor, at the other the very type of obsessing demon that would drive even the most sacred soul to drink, Essell carries the spotlight brilliantly. Whether feeding her Macaw nicknamed “Little Dick” a hot dog with child-like innocence or staring down intruders while coldly smoking a cigarette like a back alley enforcer, the actress is a revelation. For all the familiarity, she almost makes “Duplex” work better than it should just by her sheer charismatic willingness alone, generating more genuine laughs that both her better known costars combined.

Familiarity aside, “Duplex” is definitely far from a waste of time. It’s hard to understand how it has amassed its bad buzz or why Miramax has taken so long to get it into theaters as it is far better – and far funnier – than many of the other so-called “comedies” they’ve released of late (i.e. the insipid “My Boss’ Daughter”). While it doesn’t rank up there with DeVito directed classics, it’s still a pleasantly devilish way to spend some time at the movies.

Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)

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