This movie was the first pairing of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, and they work together well, with an especially good performance by Matthau as an unscrupulous lawyer who convinces his brother-in-law Hinkel to exaggerate the nature of his injuries he sustained as a CBS cameraman at a Cleveland Browns football game when a black football player accidentally runs into him. Not a bad premise, but the movie could have told the story in less than two hours.
The movie also isn't helped by the joke of Hinkel's mother always uncontrollably crying, a joke that stops being funny after two minutes, and the football player's personally helping the supposedly maimed Hinkel didn't work either. A celebrity athlete wouldn't be acting that way; even if he felt guilty, he wouldn't make himself a manservant. Perhaps the movie makers wanted to make some sort of statement about race relations, but it lacked credibility. The scenes where Hinkel's ex-wife has come back are overlong and unnecessary too; we already know she is insincere about wanting to get back to him.
Not a bad movie, but it could and should have been better.
The movie also isn't helped by the joke of Hinkel's mother always uncontrollably crying, a joke that stops being funny after two minutes, and the football player's personally helping the supposedly maimed Hinkel didn't work either. A celebrity athlete wouldn't be acting that way; even if he felt guilty, he wouldn't make himself a manservant. Perhaps the movie makers wanted to make some sort of statement about race relations, but it lacked credibility. The scenes where Hinkel's ex-wife has come back are overlong and unnecessary too; we already know she is insincere about wanting to get back to him.
Not a bad movie, but it could and should have been better.