Joe's Apartment (1996)

Joe (Jerry O'Connell) is a naive wide-eyed fresh off the bus Iowan. He gets robbed right away at the New York bus station. He befriends the strange Walter Sh1t. He gets a rundown cockroach-infested apartment. Thugs are intimidating tenants to clear out the building for Senator Dougherty (Robert Vaughn). It's the last piece before he can build a giant prison. The cockroaches find a viable roommate in the messy Joe. Joe falls for Senator Dougherty's daughter Lily (Megan Ward) who's working on a community garden in the neighborhood.This is aggressively disgusting. It's very distracting. Even without the roaches, this would be a bad comedy. The roaches are more appealing than O'Connell. With them, I can't possibly concentrate on the jokes. It wallows in disturbing images. The close-ups are especially bad. There are people who like outsider tastes. This one takes it too far.

This film is undeniable proof that shorts, especially MTV created ones, cannot make a good film. "Joe's Apartment" runs out of ideas before the halfway point. The Character Joe rents out an apartment, occupied by acres of cockroaches, who sing and dance and give Joe unwanted company. OK, we get it already.So how does a film revolving around annoying little roaches extend to 90 minutes? By adding in that predictable subplot involving the hard-to-get love interest for Joe of course, who the viewers automatically know will end up together by the end of the movie. Haven't we seen this predictable boy-gets-girl plot in countless other films? Well, not with singing and dancing roaches. I'll give it that.Joe somewhat befriends the roaches, even they are annoying and give him grief. Consider a scene where Joe brings a date to his apartment. The roaches hide, and the date suspects nothing. Soon after, when things look as if they're going well for Joe, the roaches fall out of the chandelier and fall all over Joe's date. Soon after, roaches everywhere, terrifying the girl. Joe tells her it's OK, but what woman is going to listen to that? So what does Joe do? He may start off as mad, but he always forgives them. This angers me. These are vindictive, controlling, and annoying roaches who, if I was occupied with them, would drive me to a point to get my apartment exterminated. These roaches cause Joe nothing but grief, and torture, and they invade his privacy; yet the film is supposed to make us laugh.When the film reaches its inevitable conclusion, I was so annoyed and disgusted by this time that I couldn't feel any of the euphoria the film was trying to feed its viewers. It didn't work.The film was made my MTV studios and it looks like it should have been a made-for-TV film specifically for MTV. I have not seen the short on which this was based, but I assume it was funnier that this film - it would rely on the roaches singing and dancing routine(s), without the subplots that a full length film has to have to reach its 90 minutes, which just made the cockroaches grow annoying, crude, mean, and tiresome.

I never thought I'd be praising a film for it's cockroaches but what can I say these little guys have style and some serious musical talent. The musical bits in this film are really original and alone would make this movie worth seeing and no its not just because they feature cockroaches.Aside from the vermin the visuals in this movie are great and almost have a cartoonish comic book element to them. It's kind of a shame that director John Payson hasn't had a chance to make other films since he seems to have a certain flare. The plot is rather thin its your basic boy meets girl boy tries to get girl story but others films have done worse job with the same material. Aside from the aforementioned cockroaches music wise you have to give the film credit. It has Moby long before he broke out with his album 'Play' and for a brief second you get to see what he looks look with hair ....well some hair. This film has a sense of humor and style that makes the idea that anybody thought it could be a mainstream hit kind of laughable. This is a certain film for an audience with a certain sensibility and is definitely not for everyone. If singing cockroaches don't sound like your thing then chances are you won't enjoy this film and the rather charming and talented vermin that star in it. However if your sense of humor is a little off Joe's Apartment is well worth checking out.

Jerry O'Connell plays a small town guy who moves to the big city. The premise of a thousand other movies. What sets this movie apart from other like movies is he moves into a dead womans apartment inhabited by roaches. Roachs that talk. Roachs that talk English. Roachs that talk English and sing and dance. It all came together in this little movie from MTV. Far from a classic, but it's always fun to watch the roaches do their thing. The songs, although not catchy, make you sit up and watch. Jerry plays a slob to the nth degree (and looks like he never washes his face) who must make it in New York on his own. He goes through several jobs ranging from a drummer in a rock band to a urinal puck replacer ( glad that's not my occupation!). Billy West, voice actor from Futurama, plays one of the roaches quite well. Billy was born to play a roach apparently. Nobody will ever confuse this movie with an all time great, but it is a fun little movie that never takes itself seriously.