User reviews

Mel Edison (Jack Lemmon) and his wife Edna Edison (Ann Bancroft) live lives of quiet desperation in an expensive yet shabbily constructed New York apartment with loud and obnoxious neighbors that they do not know nor do they want to know. Then Mel loses his job at age 48 after 22 years with the same firm. He says he was fired, but the modern term is laid off because it was not that he did something wrong, his employer, for whatever reason, just didn't need him anymore. So Mel's quiet desperation becomes louder as weeks turn to months and he can't find employment. Meanwhile, his wife has gone back to work and he feels less and less part of her life as she now comes home with the workplace stories instead of him. Will Mel ever find employment again? Will he ultimately crack up? Watch and find out.

This film just seems to try too hard with the voice over joke news flashes about what was modern urban life in the 1970s and the quirky extended family members. But the parade had passed it by with it seeming to retread ground first broken by All In the Family five years before. What saves it are the performances of the cast, and not just the main cast. Quite a few future famous actors have bit parts in this and it's a delight when they pop up. M.. Emmett Walsh is the apartment doorman. 1984 Best Actor Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham is a cab driver. And probably the funniest cameo appearance is unknown Sylvester Stallone as a young man who is chased through the streets of New York by an angry Mel, who thinks Stallone has stolen his wallet and he is determined to get it back.

When Mel is going to work and noticing that more and more of his coworkers are disappearing to the point where he is the last guy in the office, you might wonder why he didn't see the writing on the wall and go look for another job. After all it's easier to find another job when you still have one. The reason for this inaction is that this was made at a time when the concept of being "laid off" was a new one. From the end of WWII up until about 1970 you either got fired for being incompetent at your job or being dishonest or you had employment until you retired. That's an odd concept today when workers are perpetual - and pensionless - moving targets.

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.

I've always thought of Neil Simon as being the one playwright consistently able to capture the genuine flavor of New York as a backdrop to the realistic personalities of his characters. Not being a New Yorker - Silicon Valley is about as far away as you can get - I'm afraid I have not been drawn to movies of his plays as strongly as to other comedies.

But Prisoner of Second Avenue is an exception. Maybe it's because I am indeed in Silicon Valley, where layoffs are something we all get to experience. But this movie captured so aptly the craziness of being laid off, staying home all day - seeing only the one you love (but starting to hate him/her too as an extension of your own self-hatred). Making petty grievances huge, and trying to pretend the truly huge issues no longer exist. And worrying about the bills, and the clothes, and how silly the family behaves when money gets involved. And how the bad luck seems to snowball. And how "therapy" sessions seem so futile.

The acting is superb - but I don't know of a movie where Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft have ever given us any less. Bancroft, in particular, when she makes the transition to anger, is perfect. Thankfully we're not handed any sop at the end either.

The subject is so realistic that I don't find it funny at all - but that's a failing of the times we live in, not the movie. A great flick.

I loved this movie.It wasn't depressing in the least.Neil Simon has written many brilliant and funny plays,this being one of them(and The Out of Towner's,also with Lemmon).Jack plays a man who gets fired from his job after working there half his life.Anne plays his wife who gets another job while Jack has a breakdown and they struggle to go on with the everyday life and calamities that face them.I laughed at so many of the lines.I laughed when Jack Lemmon was yelling at the New Yorkers out of his balcony after his house had been robbed,i laughed when he was banging back on the wall at his neighbours,when he and Anne had to climb all the stairs because the elevator is broken,the look on their faces is painful but funny! Jack could play a miserable on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown man,and make you really laugh aswell. Also features a young Sylvester Stallone before his Rocky days. I love it and its one of those films i can watch over and over.

Mel Edison (Jack Lemmon) and his loving wife Edna (Anne Bancroft) live on Second Avenue in NYC. Mel hates the city and his job and complains nonstop. Edna tries to calm him down. Then Mel is laid off from his job and has a complete nervous breakdown.

Sounds like a drama but it's not. It's an adaptation of a Neil Simon play (adapted by Simon himself) and it's more or less a comedy with a very serious edge. The script itself manages to switch gears from comedy to drama pretty effortlessly and great acting by Lemmon and Bancroft keeps it going. There are quite a few people who hate Simons plays. They say the one liners are old and the characters are stale but I'm not one of those people. I happen to think his jokes are quite funny and finds he writes three-dimensional, believable characters. But, if you don't like Simon, this movie won't change your mind. Some people might accuse this of being dated--there was a huge recession going on in the mid 1970s and that is worked in to the plot. But, seeing as we're in another one at the moment, this is very timely. My only complaint is the ending is way too pat to be believable but that's minor. I give it a 7. Look for F. Murray Abraham as a cab driver and Sylvester Stallone.

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.

I'll admit from the off, I am slightly biased as I love Jack Lemmon, and Neil Simon seems to bring out the best in him

The Prisoner Of Second Avenue is a lot of fun, I really enjoyed it.

Plot In A Paragraph: Executive Mel Edison has a nervous breakdown when he suddenly finds himself unemployed.

I'm a Jack Lemmon fan anyway, so I enjoy most things that he stars in, and I always enjoy seeing him on screen. It's also fun to see a young pre-Rocky Sly Stallone in another of his early roles. Sly only has the one scene (Available on YouTube) as he attempts to pickpocket Jack Lemmon and a fed up Lemmon snaps, before he turns the tables on him and pursues him through Central Park.

Very fond though I am of Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft, I could not have known how lucky I was to find a VHS copy of this movie (yes, I still use a VCR). Any big fan of theirs should prioritize it. It is jam-packed with humor and Lemmon's endearingly characteristic pathos. It was another tailor-made role for him, and Bancroft played her part to perfection. It is also very much a New York City movie in that Manhattan is not simply the backdrop, but is experienced as such.

It has been my observation that spiraling into madness is always funnier than madness itself. The movie is after all based on "a serious play that's very funny" to quote the playwright and adapter Neil Simon. Although it soars as a comedy and certainly does not go awry as a drama, I give it nine stars instead of ten because it is considerably more amusing to me than it is emotive. It is great comedy and good drama, as apparently intended.

Sylvester Stallone's memorable cameo is a much appreciated bonus!

Let me be once again the turd in the punchbowl here by offering a dissenting opinion to this cornucopia of praise. Let's stipulate that Anne Bancroft and Jack Lemmon turn in first-rate performances here. The problem is the script, whose indecision between wanting to be on the one hand a comedy about the frustration of New York living, and on the other a chilling portrayal of a person becoming mentally unravelled in midlife, ultimately upsets the film. Any movie that contains both the slapstick scene of Mel being drenched by a bucket of water from his irate neighbor, and the truly unsettling dinner table scene where he viciously attacks his long-suffering wife is going to exhaust and confuse the viewer. That said, the fizzily Simonesque repartee is enjoyable on its own level, and the chemistry between Lemmon and Bancroft is superb. A flawed movie, but worth watching.

Okay, let me start by saying I love Neil Simon movies.The Odd Couple ranks up there in my top 10. I love the Out-of-Towners, love Murder By Death, the Sunshine Boys & many of his other films. In fact, I can say I liked every one of his movies I have ever seen. This being said, I went into watching Prisoner thinking it would be a laugh-out-loud comedy. Instead, the movie borders on full-blown drama. Sure, there are quick one-liners thrown out from Jack Lemmon towards Anne Bancroft, but these seem more like insults than zingers. Throughout the film, every line I knew was supposed to be funny made me crack a smile, but there are no burst out laughing jokes.

I guess we're supposed to feel sorry for Mel Edison & his wife. But, instead I find him to over-react at every little thing. He's a weak little man who probably deserves a lot more than he got. You feel more sorry for his wife for having to put up with him. Then later on, when the roles are reversed, you could care less about either character. The funniest parts of the movie have to do with the radio announcements made throughout the film. But 5 or 6 of these cannot hold this film together as a comedy.

It's not a bad film, & it was somewhat enjoyable to watch. The acting by Lemmon & Bancroft are top notch. But it's just not funny enough.

I think that writer Neil Simon and actor Jack Lemmon have always made for a great combination, but this film starts out strongly yet somehow loses steam as it goes along. Which is not to say that it isn't still funny a good deal of the time as we watch Lemmon play another sourpuss sort of middle-aged man who gets sore at the world and undergoes a nervous breakdown; it's just that this time the hysteria doesn't seem to lead anywhere.

Mel Edison (Lemmon) is 48 and lives with his wife Edna (Anne Bancroft) way up on the 14th floor of their noisy Manhattan apartment. Lately Mel has become more and more detached from reality as he becomes fed up with his loud neighbors, the sweltering summer heat, and the fact that he's just lost his job after 22 years of being with the company. Despite his encouraging wife's support, Mel deteriorates and turns into an unhinged bundle of nerves. Lemmon and Bancroft make a splendid team together here, but unfortunately are let down by a script that only works part of the time before painting them into a corner. **1/2 out of ****

This is a horrible, dingy, drab and depressing movie. Yes, every line is an attempted Neil Simon zinger but they fall completely flat in this tepid context.

Lemmon is an actor I have never taken to - I see him as a prize ham who always sets my teeth on edge. Here, he sweatily ups the ante with a five o'clock shadow, damp shirt and crumpled suit, coupled with an irascible, hair-trigger personality that leaves you wanting to shake him and tell him to grow up and pull himself together.

Bancroft does her best, despite being lumbered with a terrible wig (at least I HOPE it's not her own hair) and a script that has her playing a doormat for most of the movie's length. Everyone overacts to beat the band, and the whole thing is so hard on the eye - what must those burglars have thought when they walked into this dowdy, cluttered apartment? So much of what we are supposed to find funny derives from shouting - the running gag about bellowing through the wall at the oversexed cabin-crew neighbours, for example - but I didn't laugh, I reached for the painkillers.

These manic, dental-drill scenes go on and on, reaching their apogee with the snow-shovel sequence - how long does it take to rip the brown paper off a snow-shovel? And...they wrapped a snow-shovel in brown paper down at the hardware store?? No wonder resources are running low 47 years later.

I'm so sorry I subjected my wife to this.

(Avoids a one-star review by virtue of the lovely but all too scarce New York location footage)

I must confess I have a bias for films of the seventies. Most of my all time favourite films were made in that decade and this is one of them.

Jack Lemmon is a New York middle executive who is retrenched. We watch as he slides into depression. Their is some fine humour in this film, which, incidentally was not well received critically, but it is really the underlying drama that makes this such a great film. It is an intensely personal film for me and, apart from some overacting, there is little I can criticise. It is an incisive and briskly paced comedy drama which I never tire of viewing.

By the way, watch out for cameos by pre-fame Sylvester Stallone and F. Murray Abraham.

If Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue is less than an intense survey of a married couple impelled to nervous breakdown by the exasperations and disgrace of bourgeois living, it still achieves compelling thrust, both somber and hilarious, mostly the latter though. If Melvin Frank's direction is accomplished but not inventive, he's skillfully served by a cast largely populated by Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft, who launch vigorously sincere characterization as credible as the real Second Avenue and other New York locales captured by the Technicolor cameras.

Lemmon is aggravated and angst-peppered owing to the defective air-conditioning and thoughtless neighbors in his high-rise apartment house, among other things. And, his tattered nerves aren't greatly relieved when he is fired by his on-the-fence company. As an unemployed ad executive, he can't be liable for being impatient with the unemployment office. And he shouldn't be condemned for pounding on flimsy walls, cursing the neighbors, who drench him with water in reprisal, and developing neuroses swollen by imposed joblessness and appointments with an evasive shrink.

If Bancroft, as his genuinely devoted spouse who purposefully gets a job to sustain them, becomes overwrought and bemused to the point of paranoia, she, too, can't be blamed for her mounting worries when she ultimately must choose whether to receive financial help from her husband's apprehensive, if quizzical, siblings. Lemmon, no alien to Simon's work, and Bancroft are most believable and identifiable when unromanticized, and the strength of the piece is in their collaboration in roles as familiar in their comic reciprocating as many of New York's scuttling millions. And they get strong support from Odd Couple director Gene Saks, as Lemmon's prosperous, straightforward older brother and Elizabeth Wilson and Florence Stanley, as his suspicious sisters, not to mention a young Sylvester Stallone's hilarious scene, which could be the high point of the picture.

They aren't in the thick of Greek tragedy or in humdrum sitcom TV. Simon is sober about a premise that isn't momentous and he reasonably swathes its earnestness with real laughs that pop up, including radio news items such as the update that a Polish freighter has just collided with the Statue of Liberty. And, with a cast whose members recognize the value of what they're saying and doing, the trials and tribulations of Second Avenue become a diversion.

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)

The superb performances by Oscar winners Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft definitely make the 1975 film version of THE PRISONER OF SECOND AVENUE worth watching. Based on one of Simon's lesser works, this film stars Jack Lemmon as a man whose company downsizes and he gets fired and just gives up on trying to find another job and just sits around the house wallowing in self-pity while his devoted wife decides to go back to work, which he also resents because she is no longer totally focused on him. Further complications ensue when their apartment gets ransacked and everything they own of any value gets stolen. There are some funny situations and dialogue, but even mediocre Neil Simon is better than the majority of junk on the screen today. Lemmon and Bancroft are magical together and there is a nice supporting turn by Gene Saks as Lemmon's brother. There are worse ways to spend two hours.

Saw this movie on TV again the other day, was disappointed coz i did'nt even know it was on...so missed half...but seen it before so knew what to expect. Even though this movie was initially a stage play it transfers well to movie, well written and acted with such timing between all actors in the movie especially the 2 main characters who bounce off each other with consummate ease.The hilarity and one liners which come thick and fast are a joy to listen to and my feeble attempts to remember and use them myself only add weight to this joy of a comedy. I am going to see if this movie is available on DVD so that i can pause and rewind every funny line i hear to use for my own pleasure, though i will not claim them to be my own as this would be an insult to the writer and the late great Jack Lemmon and his late great co-star Anne Bancroft who deliver with such togetherness like a well stitched jumper.

Do yourself a favour, on the next rainy day go to the rental shop get this movie, take the phone off the hook, shut the curtains ( drapes)don't answer the door and watch this movie and savour every word, and i dare you not to laugh, and if you don't then ring up the undertakers because boy are you dead !!!!

Anne Bancroft played Annie Sullivan, the teacher of Helen Keller, in her memorable Oscar winning performance of "The Miracle Worker". She appeared as a suicidal housewife in "The Slender Thread". She performed as none other than the iconic Mrs. Robinson, a cold, intimidating Class A "witch" in "The Graduate". She portrayed a compassionate stage diva who also offered herself as the socially connected, sympathetic patron of severely deformed John Merrick in "The Elephant Man".

In "The Prisoner of Second Avenue", Ms. Bancroft comes full circle, this time not only as Edna Edison, a name oddly void of ethnicity, but as close as ever to Anna Maria Italiano, the daughter of a dress cutter from the Bronx. She is as authentic as a born and bred New Yorker, which she was, and very, very funny.

Being robbed in real life is a very serious and even traumatic experience, but watching Edna (Bancroft) explain the situation to Mel (Jack Lemmon), her preoccupied husband, in the midst of a ransacked apartment is just plain hilarious. "What does robbed mean? They come in, they take things out. You had 'em, now they got 'em. They used to be yours, now they're theirs. We've been robbed!" While Neil Simon could write some very funny lines, who could deliver them as well as Anne Bancroft, who wasn't as widely celebrated for comedy as she was for her much more serious , dramatic roles.

Lemmon is also excellent, but we've seen him perform before as a sympathetic, lovable schlemiel (or is it schlmazel?). Once again, he fulfills our high expectations here, even though Neil Simon's comic writing fails to sustain its early momentum after a hilarious first half hour. The humorous dialogue just fizzles out somewhere along the way but to no fault of Lemmon or Bancroft who do their very best with what they have been given. The scenes with the family, including Gene Sachs as Mel's brother, only serve to slow down the original pace to the point of monotony. I lived in the New York area during the 1970's when the overall quality of life in the city was rapidly deteriorating every day, but I thought that the reporter's periodic voice over was extremely disruptive to the film's essential tempo. I can't imagine how the ridiculous, annoying narration, which nearly destroyed the entire movie, ever survived to the finished product. Even the exceptional talent of Bancroft and Lemmon couldn't rescue a very sluggish and tired second half.

Ordinarily, you would think a movie adaptation of a Neil Simon play starring Jack Lemmon as a very harried New Yorker would be perfect cinema - and ordinarily, you'd be right! Think of The Odd Couple and you have a good idea of a 'good' Simon film.

Lemmon's character, Mel, is a Manhattan businessman who's going through a bit of a midlife crisis. We've seen this sort of thing before in the movies - Lord knows we have!! - but the problem is, we've seen it much better. There's a fine line to be walked here between maudlin and funny/touching, and sadly that line is crossed early on in the movie and never recrossed.

Mel suffers through a lot of problems in this movie, and your closeness to NYC life will dictate just how much sympathy you have for his plight. But be warned: Simon doesn't combat these problems with wit and wisdom; to me, Mel just yells and screams and basically is thoroughly obnoxious - only Anne Bancroft as his suffering wife gives an appealing performance.

Bottom line is that unless you're a diehard Simon or Lemmon fan, you might want to avoid this collection of angst, agita, and aneurysms waiting to happen.

Though Jack Lemmon received a Best Actor Oscar for "Save the Tiger"--a film on which that honorable performance was wasted--perhaps his finest performance was the character of Mel Edison in this contemporary-for-its-time dramedy. One of the only films that I have seen him in where I genuinely "feel his pain"--study his expression after the deserved dousing with water he receives on his "growth on the side of the building they call a terrace"--Lemmon progresses from disgruntled advertising executive, to desperate unemployed victim of robbery and "the plot", then through a nervous breakdown and his eventual recovery. Perhaps this film's only flaw is its subject matter, as unemployment nowadays is virtually extinct, but it does not warrant anything less than a perfect 10 on my scorecard. Make this a Lemmon-must-see, along with "The China Syndrome", "Mister Roberts", "The Odd Couple", and "Glengarry Glen Ross".

One of the last of the I Hate NY films that flourished in the late 60s and early 70s only to abruptly die out once Woody Allen came on the scene and made it a felony even to dislike that noisome burg. Act one and the first half of act two are pretty good with Lemmon and Bancroft in fine form as typically neurotic products of Gotham, and Neil Simon provides them with just enough mordantly amusing observations to keep me entertained. But then, following Bancroft's great riff on the zen of being burglarized, in my opinion the funniest bit in the movie, Simon's dialogue goes from darkly comic to simply dark which I, for one, wouldn't have minded, as I tend to like films about depression, only I didn't sign up for this Underground Man stuff that Lemmon starts doing and felt, as I'm sure a lot of my IMDB colleagues did considering this film's low rating, a distinct bait and switch vibe.

As for the rest of the film, well, suffice it to say that Simon never gets his comic mojo back and leave it at that. Give it a generous C plus for the first half.

PS...Fun to see Stallone, Abraham and Walsh before they made it big.

Sorry people, this is marred by predictability and over-the-top acting. And, in 1975 could a humble clerk really have lived like that, when today you have to be practically a millionaire to live in a flat like that? Would even a nutty lady as played by Bancroft REALLY have left the door open, and could the robbers really have taken so much stuff in 5 minutes, and in broad daylight? The house is full of books, but just for show 'cuz these two obviously are not great readers. I usually don't leave the room till the films finished, but since I intuited EXACTLY what was going to happen, I came here to write these words. If you got hooked by this, more power to you; compare this to the sophisticated comedies of the thirties and forties, and you'll see what I mean.

Both of these actors were capable of far better efforts, but I'll give it a four just so I don't get lynched. :~)