Watch The Sunshine Boys For Free

Best movie ever!

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I love Neil Simon's work; George Burns- one of the funniest straight-man of all time; Walter Matthau among my favorites- How could this all-star lineup finish in last place?The opening scene of the pigeon standing on George M. Cohan's statue is the best part of the movie.The rest is worse than crash and burn, it's burn the whole way down before crashing into nothingness.

'The Sunshine Boys' is about the imminent reunion of two vaudeville era comedians. However, it is not so easy to organize a successful creative collaboration between two volatile actors who have not spoken in two decades. This is not a film for viewers who don't appreciate slow films. It is neither a slow film per se nor does it feature a quick succession of events. This Herbert Ross film starts in a slow manner but gathers pace as the story progresses. If one says that the life of an old person is difficult, one can only imagine how difficult would the lives of two creative old men be. There is a lot for audiences as a lot of questions are raised about actors especially their lives and acting methods. It is said that old people are left to fend for themselves. However, one has to appreciate the dedication with which a young nephew takes care of his old uncle. Lastly, a viewer would remember this film as an excellent creative endeavor aimed at depicting true feelings of actors who are past their prime.

There are three themes running through this Neil Simon comedy: (1) Jokes about the forgetful condition and other deficits of old people, (2) Resentment between two Jewish ex-vaudevillians (Matthau and Burns), and (3) The problems inherent in organizing a presentation of their famous medical sketch for a reunion on a television special on the history of comedy.They're all reasonably well handled. It's like "The Odd Couple" forty years on, only this time with a mediator, Richard Benjamin as Matthau's agent/nephew, the harried young man with the chest pains.Both men may be frail and scatterbrained but Burns is at least sane, while Matthau's character is a bitter curmudgeon filled with dislike and sometimes outright contempt for everyone, even those who try to help him. He can be dangerously out of control too, hobbling around after Burns with a kitchen knife, crashing into the furniture.It's not as funny as "The Odd Couple" though, not in the same way at any rate. Some of the gags seem a little forced and others, not forced, aren't especially amusing. Example: Benjamin opens the door when Burns knocks and says, "Oh, how are you, Mr. Lewis? Come in." And Burns replies, "How are you, I'm Al Lewis." That's funny? The same kind of ritualistic exchange is derailed over and over.The vaudeville sketch we see has gags that are so crusty with age that it's difficult to imagine that people once paid to see them. And it ends with a deus ex heart attack, which signals not only a collapse of the body but of the writer's imagination.Still, Simon hasn't lost his touch with verbal gags. "I'm okay," Burns tells Matthau at their first meeting in years. "The blood still circulates. It doesn't circulate EVERYWHERE but it circulates." Matthau gets off this impossible tirade when Burns visits him in New York and demands that, in the sketch, Matthau use the phrase "Come in," instead of "Enter." "You know the trouble with you? You're out of touch. I look out this window and I see everything. I see people scrounging, running. I see traffic. I see car crashes. I see murders. I see fighting. I see jumpers off roofs! You sit on your porch and you see a lawnmower. You see the milkman!" Burns: "And that's why you won't say 'Come in'?"Matthau's minor cardiac spasm leads to a warmer, though ironic, conclusion. Matthau is finally convinced that he should set up his life in a new setting, a home for retired actors in New Jersey. He's convalescing at home and is visited by Burns, who informs him that, now that his (Burns') daughter is going to have a baby, he's going to leave her house and live in a home for retired actors in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "I hope you'll come visit me," he says. "You can count on it," Matthau replies, burying his head under the covers.It has more sentiment than "The Odd Couple" and its comedy, except for Matthau's outright lunacy, is less barbed. Matthau is great as he slouches around his cluttered New York apartment in a bathrobe, mumbling to himself.You'll probably enjoy it, and thank God Matthau's character doesn't die.

It's stagy, but good...THE SUNSHINE BOYS is vintage Neil Simon. George Burns may have won a (very nostalgic) Oscar for his performance, but Walter Matthau is the reason to see the film. He's hysterical. And unlike Burns, he's actually acting, giving a stellar performance as a man many years his senior and he dominates the movie. The director, Herbert Ross, keeps the movie moving at a brisk pace while allowing Matthau scene after priceless scene. Whether sparring with his no-nonsense nurse or with his infinitely patient nephew/agent (a very restrained Richard Benjamin) or, as the topper, dueling with former show-biz partner Burns, it's his show all the way.