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The Odd Couple is one of the most enduring stories of the past 45 years; that may sound like silly hyperbole, but I’m willing to say it’s not. As I mentioned, the movie was first a play (Matthau reprised his role from the Broadway stage, but Lemmon took over for Art Carney); it spawned a sitcom starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall, had a sequel 30 years after its release, and what’s more, the play is still being performed. Ever since the story was rewritten for the opposite sex, it’s become even more long-lasting. Last year, at the school where my wife teaches, the high-schoolers put on a production of a show whose premiere on Broadway may predate their parents. So what is it about The Odd Couple that works so well 40 years after the fact?

Relatability is the answer. We all know a slob, and we all know a neat freak. (Hell, you may be the slob, or the neat freak. I’m somewhere in the middle.) We’ve all been annoyed with slobs, and the same with neat freaks. Granted, we may not have as many ways around a snappy one-liner, but the frustration and anger is still there. It is impressive, however, that the writer of the story, the great Neil Simon, is able to turn such comic gold from what could be truly bleak material. Weirdly enough, the weakest part of the film is the opening ten-minute sequence, which is almost completely wordless and features an appropriately mopey Lemmon walking around New York City. There’s a bit of dark humor to be had from his failed attempts at suicide, but there’s only so many ways you can wring laughs from that.

Once the film enters Oscar’s apartment (which is where about 90% of the action takes place on screen), the movie gets moving, and fast. Oscar is surrounded by his other poker buddies, and they talk and talk and talk. What’s so impressive about the dialogue in The Odd Couple is that it manages to be as funny today as it must have been back in the mid-1960s. Unlike characters in something from, say, Aaron Sorkin, the characters in Simon’s play are hilarious and smart without ever seeming to know that they’re being hilarious or acting especially clever. Oscar, Felix, and the guys who make up the poker table are all intelligent, and all manage to come up with funny lines, inside jokes, or gags, but it’s done so effortlessly that you almost feel like you’re sitting in on the game and just waiting for your turn to call or raise a bet.

That Lemmon and Matthau are both excellent should go without saying. One of many reasons why both men had a career resurgence in the 1990s, with such comedies as Grumpy Old Men, Grumpier Old Men, Out to Sea, and The Odd Couple II, was because of the chemistry they had as a team. Most of those movies aren’t particularly good - the only moment I remember from Out to Sea is of a door being shut in Matthau’s face - but they featured two likable, charming lead actors in movies that managed to be charming and not at all challenging. The Odd Couple is both of those things, but it’s also incredibly funny. Lemmon and Matthau managed to have completely different personas here, and ride that throughout their lengthy partnership as co-stars.

They’re supported strongly here by John Fiedler (a New York actor known for his role in 12 Angry Men and for being the original voice of Piglet in the Winnie the Pooh shorts), Herb Edelman, Larry Haines, and Carole Shelley (as one of two British widows Oscar tries to woo), among others. But the show is Lemmon and Matthau, and the two of them on-screen at the same time. The first few minutes in Oscar’s apartment are funny, but we’re all really waiting for them to be in the same scene. The longer and longer you wait makes the actual time they have even more enjoyable, even funnier, even more of a relief. Don’t be fooled by the cheesy poster - which turns their faces into a frightening bit of faux-frustration - and prepare to laugh more than you think.

Lemmon and Matthau would have successful careers for years after The Odd Couple, but it’s kind of criminal that Matthau was known, for the most part, as a comic performer for the rest of his career. Yes, in the mid-1970s, he made two notable dramas - Charley Varrick and the original The Taking of Pelham One Two Three - but most people think of him as the crabby but lovable coach in The Bad News Bears or the lovable scamp of the Grumpy Old Men films. He’s great in those roles, but they’re too easy. Even in The Odd Couple, a straight comedy, his work is a little more difficult. In some ways, watching him in his later years is like watching a piano prodigy sleepwalk through playing one of his great pieces. The notes are right, the music sounds fine, but he could be doing so much more. As lamentable as it is, we should all be thankful for Matthau’s talent and his work in The Odd Couple.

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