Duplex (2003)

Alex and Nancy move into their lovely new house full of hope, regardless of the old lady living upstairs. They soon realize that their life is starting to fall apart so they must try to find various solutions to "evacuate" the unwelcome tenant before they lose their minds. Unbeknownst to them, their neighbor is pretty determined to keep her residence, so they'll have to work hard to achieve their goal.I like the whole idea of this movie and thanks to some good acting, a lot of very funny situations come to life. Unfortunately it's a bit too "forced" and very unlikely, kind of the worst that could happen. The ending isn't groundbreaking to say the least, unexpected but stupid at the same time. It's a good movie if you're looking for a laugh, otherwise it's nothing special.

A young couple has a chance to move into a gorgeous duplex in the perfect New York neighborhood. All they have to do is bump off the current tenant, a cute little old lady.I feel like there was potential here but it never quite reached the full level. The concept is perfect for a dark comedy, and Danny DeVito is the right guy to bring such a script to fruition. But the lead actors were just not right. Ben Stiller has a few good comedies, but mostly duds. He was not able to bring his A-game. And Drew Barrymore was just bad through and through.There is one aspect about the film I liked: the suggestion that the old woman was immortal or possibly the devil herself. These ideas are only hinted out, but I thought it was quite clever to drop those hints in there...

The home gatecrasher, the unwelcome guest, and the tenant from hell. These can be used to sum up the story of Duplex, directed by comedian/actor Danny DeVito and featuring the first time pairing of comedians Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore as the husband and wife suburban couple who through an animated opening credit sequence, go through property after property looking for the perfect place to set up their home, which should also double up as a home office for Stiller's Alex Rose, an up and coming writer due to complete his next novel without having to write at Starbucks.Thanks to their housing agent, they settle for the titular duplex, which seemed like a great idea for their housing plans and one that's within their budget, a good deal even though it comes with a caveat that they cannot throw out the existing tenant, an old lady called Mrs Connelly (Eileen Essell) who stays upstairs and well, pays the rent. But little do they know that their lives would soon turn topsy turvy through the skillful manipulation that senior citizens can be capable of, appealing to good citizenry in wanting to help others, only to be willingly exploited to run errants, and face a crisis of sorts in either wanting to stay put, or leave.So we go into full gear of the battle between households, where sleep gets interrupted through the elderly lady putting on her TV at full blast, and the couple getting back in tit- for-tat fashion. But it seems that Mrs Connelly is always one step ahead either in the luck department, or having the authorities, Officer Dan (Robert Wisdom) on her side. After all, who would you rather believe - a frail old woman in her twilight years, or a young yuppie couple whose backfiring revenge tactics put them in bad light as discourteous, intolerant people? Oh if only everyone else knew the cunningness of the elderly!Danny DeVito's film, based on a story by Larry Doyle, however keeps things rather firmly in PG fashion even though the couple's intent move from nice tactics into murderous territory, deciding to employ desperate measures given that they're driven up the wall and with the couple both having their household revenue stream impacted. Both Stiller and Barrymore provide good comic timing especially in their individual scenes (well, someone has to bring home the bacon) when their characters get stuck with "entertaining" the bothersome old lady whose benign requests usually turn out to the contrary.But the scene stealer would of course be Eileen Essell as Mrs Connelly with her playing both the fragile old Irish lady who is more than meets the eye, a force to be reckoned with beneath the aged exterior, capable of tugging at your conscience and making you feel guilty should you not accede to her gentle pleas, which almost always come laced with sarcasm, or the nitty gritty that makes you feel bad. Convincingly playing her role without which this film would probably have not been able to make us laugh with or at Stiller and Barrymore's characters as they get stuck in their predicament which comes with a predictable twist at the end. It's evil, I know.

Watching Danny Devito's Duplex is interesting and enjoyable but when it begins to wrap up it kind of creeps you out. Especially when they hire a hit-man to kill her. Wait, maybe i'm starting a little too soon in the review.Duplex is about a couple (played by Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore) who move into a Duplex in New York City. Living in the floor above them is a cruel old woman named Mrs. Connelly(played by Eileen Essel). She looks all sweet but she is actually quite a bitch.They get tired of running errands for her. and she eventually begins to ruin their lives. So they go to extreme measures. From trying to ruin her pipe lines to buying a gun to trying to get her sick to even hiring a hit-man.Duplex is a dark comedy. It is funny, but at the same time is dark. This may sound bad but I would probably go to those lengths too. Drew Barrymore and Ben Stiller are funny. Though some of the laughs are obvious the movie is entertaining. Duplex is funny. I laughed out loud many times. I'm glad I found out about it. Though flawed, I still find it to be underrated. Though I can kind of see why it didn't do well. Still recommending it.Duplex:B+