Watch The Prisoner of Second Avenue For Free

Sorry, this movie sucks

Sadly Over-hyped

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I've always enjoyed Jack Lemmon's work, and his performance in "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" was another in a long line of winning roles for the veteran actor. As Mel Edison, Lemmon plays a middle aged man struggling at work, already feeling pressured and losing touch with reality just a bit, who suddenly loses the job he's held all his adult life. Unemployment causes him to crash further - a process accelerated even more when his wife Edna has to get a job to support them. Edna was played by Ann Bancroft; Lemmon and Bancroft made a good team.With its focus on Mel's mental state, this seems as if it could become a rather heavy movie, but it doesn't. Even while it deals with real issues - everything from Mel's employment crisis to the drawbacks of city life - it manages to retain a lightness that brings forth smiles and even a few laughs from the viewer. The slow turning of the tables revolving around Mel and Edna and their roles is interesting to watch. As it closes, the movie is hopeful but open-ended. Mel seems to pull himself back together, but you don't know if things will actually work out for this couple.There's an appearance in this by Sylvester Stallone that's a curiosity more than anything. "Rocky" wouldn't appear until a year later, so Stallone at the time of this movie was a basically unknown actor, who had a minor and brief role (listed in the credits as merely "Youth in Park) that he performed well, but who would have known that a year later he'd suddenly be a mega-star, nominated for an Oscar as best actor for his role in a movie that would win an Oscar for best picture. Stallone fans might want to watch this just for the few minutes he's on screen.But Jack Lemmon is the highlight here, and the real reason to watch this movie. (7/10)

Mel Edison (Jack Lemmon) and Edna (Anne Bancroft) live in a middle-of-the-road life in an Upper East side Manhattan highrise. They are empty nesters. He's getting more and more unhappy with the city. It's noisy, smelly and everybody is on strike. He's cracking up. His work company is struggling and everybody is getting fired including him. Their apartment gets robbed and Edna wants to move. She gets a job as a TV production assistant. The unemployed Mel deteriorates mentally putting strains on their marriage.The movie starts out with some hilarious bits in the first half. Lemmon is terrific and Bancroft has some fun chemistry with him. Then it goes crazy disturbed as Mel goes insane. A crazy Mel is not as funny especially if he's going to pull a knife on Edna. The comedy falls a bit flat after that point. His insanity goes a little too far. Sly Stallone has a small role as a pickpocket.

That moment of Anne Bancroft's is my favorite part of the entire film, often imitated where I used to work.No one loves urban blight like Neil Simon, and no one depicts it as well. "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" goes much further than "The Out of Towners" because now, the leads (Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft) are actually living in a New York apartment, sleeping in 12 degree air conditioning in their bedroom during a heat wave and sweating everywhere else. Simon leaves nothing out: not having the right change for the bus, the elevator being out, no water, noisy neighbors, mean neighbors, a cheaply put together building, robberies in broad daylight, etc. Lemmon plays a 22-year veteran of a business who is fired, suffers a nervous breakdown, and goes into psychiatric care. His problems go beyond the loss of his job - he has to cope with his country dwelling brother Harry (Gene Saks) and his two sisters (Elizabeth Wilson and Florence Stanley) who want to help but only succeed in being aggravating. Also, his wife has gone back to work as a production assistant and is never home.This is really a comedy-drama that shows the enormous range of both actors. The beautiful Bancroft is great as an empty nester who tries to be supportive of her husband, who is losing it, as she goes toward the same territory; Lemmon is alternatively a riot, as annoying as Felix Unger, and as sad as his character in "Save the Tiger" while he attempts to work through his issues and find out who he is.With a high rise at Second Avenue and E. 88th St. as a backdrop, "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" is timely today because it takes place during a recession. Suddenly, a lifestyle that wasn't so outrageous to begin with is hard to keep up, and nerves fray.City dwellers won't find it difficult to relate to this film, and today, with jobs cuts and loss of income, nobody will. Lots of fun.

Worth a chuckle or more, this sometimes hilarious comedy hits a raw nerve with anyone who has lived in an apartment building where you can hear all the noise you never wanted to (at all sorts of hours), in a world that starts with listening to the radio news detail one horror after another.That's the way the Broadway play started. The lights went out before the curtain opened and all you heard was a radio announcer delivering one crazy incident after another on the local news. That was the prologue to what you knew was about to follow. Then the curtains parted and the play began.JACK LEMMON and ANNE BANCROFT play off each other brilliantly, but when all is said and done, there's just something missing in this Neil Simon comedy. The payoff that you should feel when the movie ends, just isn't there.And yet, when you hear some of the news, it's almost quaint. Just think what was supposed to get a laugh: a news flash that a Polish freighter had just run into the Statue of Liberty. How tame!! Imagine what kind of news flash there would have been if this were written after 9/11.Good supporting roles from Gene Saks, as Lemmon's brother, and Elizabeth Wilson and Florence Stanley as his sisters.It may be lesser Simon, but it's still worth seeing, especially for New Yorkers.