'Duplex' is doubly bad

Friday, September 26, 2003

By Ron Weiskindpost-Gazette Movie Editor

Danny DeVito directs movies like Louie DePalma, his character on the TV show "Taxi," dispatched cabs -- with a gleeful malevolence that could almost be labeled sociopathic.

	'DUPLEX' RATING: PG-13 for sexual content, language and some violence. STARRING: Ben Stiller, Drew Barrymore, Eileen Essel. DIRECTOR: Danny DeVito.

His new film, "Duplex," invites unflattering comparisons to his first directorial effort, "Throw Momma from the Train." In both movies, an overbearing old woman drives a younger man (in each film, a frustrated writer) to thoughts of homicide.

"Duplex" differs from "Momma" in that, unlike Anne Ramsey's monstrous character in the earlier film, upstairs neighbor Mrs. Connelly (Eileen Essel) seems at first to be sweet but befuddled. Only after a while do we sense there may be method to her constant intrusiveness.

Also, "Momma" cast DeVito himself as the matricidal man, with Billy Crystal as his partner in crime, inspired by Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train." In "Duplex," Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore play Alex and Nancy, a young married couple looking for an affordable apartment in New York City with enough room to start a family. A weaselly real-estate agent (Harvey Fierstein) directs them to a Brooklyn duplex that is perfect except for the upstairs tenant, whom they can't evict because of rent control.

She turns her television up so loud at night that it becomes impossible to sleep. She keeps buzzing at Alex's door while he's trying to finish a novel on a fast-approaching deadline. She keeps finding largely exaggerated problems in her apartment. Before long, she drives them to such distraction that their careers are at risk. They would take a huge loss to sell the place. In desperation, they begin thinking about ways to kill her.

With Stiller in the movie, we know things are only likely to backfire. He's the king of humiliation comedy, his efforts doomed to backfire on himself in embarrassing fashion. He's adopted the schlimazel -- Yiddish for someone with chronic bad luck -- as his comic persona in movies ranging from "There's Something About Mary" to "Meet the Parents."

As a result, the movie keeps feeding us gross-out jokes at Alex's expense. He has to give Mrs. Connelly artificial respiration (this is before he thought about killing her) when she's choking on a chocolate caramel. Fixing the old woman's sink, both he and Nancy get a faceful of gunk. He has to hide in Mrs. Connelly's bathroom when she comes in to soak in the tub. Every good deed concludes with a cop threatening them.

Some of this might have been funny if Alex and Nancy had done anything to deserve it (not until the final scene does this become clear) or if DeVito had crafted the movie with some sense of momentum. It takes half the movie before Alex and Nancy decide to employ desperate measures.

Screenplay credit goes to Larry Doyle, previously a writer for "Beavis and Butt-Head" and "The Simpsons," and John Hamburg, who worked on "Meet the Parents" and another Stiller comedy, "Zoolander."

No wonder the movie feels like a cartoon even after its animated opening sequence.

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