DUPLEX

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: sexual/crude humor

Rated:

A quirky and darkly humorous sadistic comedy, Duplex is about the tenant from hell. Alex and Nancy (Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore) are looking for the perfect place to settle down and raise a family. Alex is a newly published author working under a deadline. He has six weeks to finish his next book. Nancy is an editor and text proofer for a local high-rise magazine. Their combined budget doesn't allow for anything spacious... until they come on the perfect solution: a nice little turn-of-the-century house in Brooklyn for an astonishing price. With eighteen hundred square feet of room, the newlyweds are entertaining visions of grandeur. Their real estate agent reassures them it's a wonderful place to settle down, and of course the only stipulation in the duplex is its upstairs tenant, Mrs. Connelly (Eileen Essel). The hundred year old woman has a life lease... unless she decides voluntarily to leave or dies, they cannot evict her.

Mrs. Connelly seems like a charming old lady and they swiftly agree to purchase the duplex. After moving all their furniture in and bragging to all their friends, the two settle down for "the perfect life"... but then realize the woman upstairs is a nightmare. She watches television in the middle of the night, her speakers blaring. When Alex is trying to work on his book, she begs him to dispense with rats, fix her bathroom pipes, and help her count grapes at the local supermarket. Every attempt of her new landlords to keep her under control fails. They purchase a clap-box so they can turn off her television in the middle of the night... and she figures out how it works. Her macaw parrot is a nightmare. Her apartment is filled with all sorts of odds and ends, including a spear gun. Worst of all, the local policeman (Robert Wisdom) is growing suspicious that they're out to "do in" their elderly tenant. When they bought the place, the real estate agent assured them she wasn't likely to live very long... but the woman dances to Riverdance, "sneaks a fag" now and again, and looks as though she'll live another twenty years.

When their attempts at bribery fail, Alex and Nancy start considering other methods to get their duplex... including hiring a hit man, tampering with pipes, and sneaking up the dumbwaiter. But this evil old lady is ahead of them every step of the way... and almost seems to regard their attempts to get rid of her with sadistic glee. The result is a hodgepodge of hilarious antics all revolving around the unsavory notion of murder. The movie seems to be split in half. You side with Alex and Nancy, but also have a little bit of compassion for the "innocent" Mrs. Connelly. On the other hand, she can also give a person the creeps. She catches them red-handed one night in her apartment and gives the notion that this isn't your average granny. She peeks through windows, invites her church's Bingo club over for band practice on Saturday mornings, and drives her landlords up the proverbial wall. It's all rather tongue in cheek but that doesn't excuse the fact that the entire plot revolves around "popping off an old crone." It's a morbid topic to base a film on, even if it does make you laugh to see their maneuverings.

Most of the plots are amateur but cruel; they consider smothering her, weaken the floorboards with water corrosion so she might fall through, and talk about various means of dismemberment and torture. They go as far as to hire a hit man with a knife, but once again are foiled when Mrs. Connelly harpoons him. Nancy envisions throwing the woman down the stairs, and tries to wire a lamp to electrocute her. Ironically enough, on the two opportunities they were given to let her die, the couple always rise to the occasion and save her life. It always backfires, however. In the first instance she chokes on a chocolate and they perform CPR. She wakes up to find Alex's mouth smeared with chocolate and lipstick, and Nancy straddling her, at which point she goes to the police and accuses them of "sexual harassment." Alex gets stuck in her bathroom while she's bathing; by his horrified expression we can presume she's "pleasing herself" in the tub. When the gun they purchase for killing Mrs. Connelly backfires, it shoots Alex in the groin. There's a totally inappropriate and crude scene in which a female doctor puts her hand up underneath his hospital wrap to make sure "everything is intact." There are several coarse references to male anatomy; Mrs. Connelly named her parrot "Little Dick" after her husband Richard, and Nancy makes a few references (one in a cartoon) to her husband's private parts.

Alex and Nancy start becoming romantic in bed several times but are always interrupted by blaring noise from upstairs. They get up after one tryst in the living room to find Mrs. Connelly looking through the glass front door. The hit man they hire is a pornographer who gives Alex several crudely titled films. The couple contract the flu bug on purpose (it's supposed to be very dangerous for "children and old people") and try to give it to their tenant. Mrs. Connelly has them unplug her kitchen sink, which shoots putrid, filthy water into Nancy's face. She becomes sick and throws up all over Alex's face. There's a large amount of comic violence, all played for laughs; a man is sprayed in the face with mace and falls down the stairs, Nancy is electrocuted by the lamp she's trying to rig to fry Mrs. Connelly, and Alex is blasted across the room with a gas explosion. A harpoon nearly hits one woman and goes through the shoulder of an assassin later. There's some general language (possibly one f-word, other slang terms, and mild profanity). Alex gives the ceiling the finger in frustration, and rants and raves about what Mrs. Connelly wants in a restaurant, which includes licking her backside. 

Duplex is fairly typical of the coarse, crude, sadistic comic movies put out in the last few years. Any good lessons it has to impart are overthrown by the needless sexual humor. Nancy and Alex do plan to "terminate" their tenant but in the end save her life. The conclusion to the film has a twist that demands a second viewing to fully understand how it could be possible. It is funny, but in a morbid, cruel kind of way. The individual elements of scum aren't overwhelming when apart, but put together make a very coarse, rude, unrefined, and cold-hearted comedy. I wouldn't recommend it.

© www.charitysplace.com - all rights reserved.