drednm Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau star in this long and lame comedy about two old guys who get jobs as dance partners on a cruise ship. Each one finds love on the high seas.Lemmon plays the dope who gets tricked by brother-in-law Matthau into a cruise, not knowing they've been hired to squire old ladies around the dance floor. Could have been funny, but it goes under really fast.Lemmon meets a shy widow (Gloria DeHaven) and Matthau tries to snag a Texas heiress (Dyan Cannon) only to find out that she's also a fortune hunter. Tons of wasted talent here. Elaine Stritch plays Cannon's conniving mother, Hal Linden and Donald O'Connor play fellow dance partners, Rue McClanahan plays the cruise ship owner, Estelle Harris is one of the old ladies, Edward Mulhare plays a card cheater, and Brent Spiner gets way too much screen time as the ship's snarky entertainment director.The situations are unbelievable from the get-go. The film is 30 minutes too long in any case. No one outside of Lemmon, Matthau, Cannon, Spiner, and DeHaven get much to do, although Stritch breathes a little bit of life into this mess. Film would have been much better getting rid of Cannon (who comes off as a total zero) and teaming Stritch and Matthau.There's also a maudlin streak running through the film with Lemmon moping around because his wife died. Who wants to watch him sobbing at her picture in a frame? This was supposed to be a comedy! This one should have followed the Titanic to the bottom of the sea and taken director Martha Coolidge with it.

Python Hyena Out to Sea (1997): Dir: Martha Coolidge / Cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Mathau, Brent Spiner, Dyan Cannon, Brent Spiner: Very funny comedy with two elderly males attempting to relive their glory days. The title regards the clueless high hopes by the leads. Walter Matthau plays a gambler who talks his widowed pal into going on an all expense paid cruise but he didn't mention the catch, which is that he signed them both up as dance hosts. The entertainment organizer, who opens his own act, takes an immediate dislike to our grumpy old men. The rest involves their encounter with two other women. Jack Lennon still loves his deceased wife so he struggles in accepting new love. Matthau gets caught up on the dance floor for which his inability to dance is put hilariously to the test. Familiar plot travels a predictable formula but director Martha Coolidge shows examples of comic timing. She previously made such entertaining comedies as Valley Girl and Real Genius. Matthau and Lemmon have irresistible comic chemistry. Brent Spiner plays the entertainment organizer in a standard role yet a terrific foil. Dyan Cannon plays Matthau's love interest but the role is too straight forward. Brent Spiner plays the foiled master of ceremonies who views our duo as a major inconvenience. Theme regards aged friendship. That keeps the script from drifting out to sea. Score: 7 ½ / 10

Steve Pulaski Out to Sea is perfectly acceptable daytime entertainment, but then again, when looking at the body of work Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau made together, it treads the line of unacceptable daytime entertainment. Lemmon and Matthau were unstoppable forces of hilarity and laughter in their 1968 screen debut in The Odd Couple and, despite playing rivals and not friends, were terrific as bitter codgers in the back-to-back Grumpy Old Men films. Out to Sea, on the other hand, plays like a screenplay that was meant for two relatively unknown elderly actors - not two established, renowned ones whose filmographies are littered with winners.Lemmon and Matthau star as Herb and Charlie, respectively. Charlie runs up a bill with the local bookie because of bets on horseracing and gets him and his friend Herb jobs as dancers aboard a luxury cruiseline. This is the last thing Herb wants and, particularly, it's the last thing Charlie want but this isn't the time for choices. Charlie needs money and Herb needs the company and the experience, despite not admitting it.Out to Sea would've likely been funnier had it taken a raunchier route, I believe. As is, the film feels like a safe, unrealistic, geriatric comedy with little depth of humor outside quirky incidents (which was the opposite of Lemmon and Matthau's comedic masterpiece The Odd Couple). However, when the conversational fluidity finds its way into this film, it becomes a tad more bearable. When Herb and Charlie engage in lively banter about relationships, age, and life itself is when the film evolves into more than acceptable entertainment.This is the reason my review of Out to Sea isn't the definition of mediocrity or a scathing one. The chemistry the two actors have on screen together mimics a long-lasting, inseparable friendship between two elderly friends that feels authentic. Combine that with occasional sparks of humor based on events rather than dialog, and you have a tolerable film that is akin to a mixed bag in cinema.Starring: Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Directed by: Martha Coolidge.

elcutach I never heard of this film when it first came out. It must have sunk immediately. :o) I saw it on cable while sick in hospital so I hardly had enough energy to watch it, let alone turn the channel. Better choice than the Style Channel. ;0(. Filmed on location, this travelogue should have been on the Travel Channel. The plot is recycled from ship board farces of the thirties and forties. The cast seems to have been recycled from the fifties. Donald O'Connor, star of musicals and Edward Mulhare as a card shark. As to the main cast, Walter Matthau is still playing the same part as he did in Guys and Dolls or was it the one about the orphan girl? Wiseacre irresponsible gambler and rounder. But it just doesn't take with a man of his age. As to Jack Lemmon, he plays his part so straight, he can hardly dip and glide when dancing. And as mentioned, Dyan Cannon is outstandingly attractive as another swindler sailing with her mother who thinks Walter is rich, while he thinks she is rich. Elaine Stritch plays Dyan's mother, another retread from the fifties. The most fun is the running feud between Brent Spiner as the domineering and snotty cruise director who immediately spots Walter as a poor dancer, and spends his time trying to get him dismissed so he will have to pay for his free passage. In the end, though he receives his comeuppances. Meanwhile Jack mopes about, meets an attractive woman, with mutual attraction, but their affair is broken up by Walter's lies that Jack is a doctor, when he was actually a retired department store buyer. But finally, the two men take to the sea in a rubber boat to intercept her seaplane and all is well. There does not seem to be any principal player under the age of fifty.