Movie Review: The Apartment (1960)

So I'd been thinking about transferring all of my old reviews from Flixster over to my blog. But after realizing that I rated about 266, I decided against it. Instead, what I'ma do is review movie that I RECENTLY have seen or movies that I feel I have something unique to share with you guys.

For this review, I'm cookin' up some old school flava with "The Apartment". Brief plot teaser: C.C. Baxter is a grunt at his insurance firm, but manages to ascend the corperate ladder by loaning his aparment to his superiors for their licencious extramerital affairs. Kinky...Especially for the 1960's. Add a crush on the elevator girl and one badass Fred MacMurray villain and you've got a hilarious and suprisingly deep comedy-drama.

Billy Wilder, of Some Like It Hot fame, scores again another comedy-drama masterpiece. His hilarious and deep original screenplay includes complex yet easily-identifiable characters, exhibiting the same idiosyncrasies and common flaws that normal people have. For example, even the seemingly insignificant inclusion of C.C. Baxter’s cold provides for great realism and comedy. Plus, the dialogue is hilarious and deliciously off-kilter. My favorite example of this is the classic “spaghetti-making” scene with the tennis racquet and the great line, “You should see my backhand.”

Plus, Wilder's always-inventive directorial style pushes new bounds of cinema (note the great opening scene). The thing that makes The Apartment so brilliant is the seamless integration of meaningful, well-written dialogue (“makes me look just the way I feel”) with well-shot dramatic situations and easily loveable/hateable characters to make it a satisfying film that we can watch again and again. Considered by many to be one of the funniest movies ever, The film lands at #93 on the AFI's (American Film Institute) list of Top 100 Films, as well as at #20 on their list of Top 100 Laughs. Check it out and laugh thy ass off.