Manhattan on the Rocks

"Ohhh . . . my Go-dd!" It is halfway between a squawk and a prayer and issues from the gymnastic lips of an Ohio housewife named Gwen Kellerman (Sandy Dennis) on a junket to New York. Her husband George (Jack Lemmon) has come East to be interviewed for an important new job, and he has brought her along to celebrate what he feels will be a sure thing. Their plans are set with elaborate care. But as any weary traveler or native New Yorker could tell them, The Out-of-Towners haven't got a chance.

First of all, their plane cannot land at Kennedy Airport, and they are rerouted to Boston. Their luggage disappears. They barely catch the last train to New York. When they get to Grand Central Station they discover that the entire city transit system is on strike and that the garbage hasn't been collected for days. Of course it is raining, and the crowded hotel has not held their reservation. They are subsequently robbed, hijacked and left to sleep exhausted in Central Park, where Gwen is accosted ("Ohhh . . . my Go-dd!") by a curious character in a black cape. It is a lot of typical evenings in New York rolled into one, shaped by Broadway's Neil Simon into a frantic, funny tale that frazzles the nerve ends.

Simon is a careful comic craftsman who is at pains to draw belly laughs from basically realistic--and therefore emphatic--situations. His humor never becomes bizarre, even though it is a bit strained by Director Arthur Hiller's nerve-racking pace. After all, even the Kellermans need to rest a little. Jack Lemmon, frantically trying to retaliate against the injustices of the big city by threatening all clerks, drivers and officials with lawsuits, is still adept at playing The Odd Couple's Felix, that fellow "with the clenched hair." The only trouble is that it is getting to be his only role. Sandy Dennis is surprisingly restrained and charmingly addled as Lemmon's beleaguered spouse, and there are several bright cameo performances, notably a precise and uproarious impersonation of an epicene hotel clerk by Anthony Holland. The Out-of-Towners is the perfect light entertainment for the summer months, but perhaps it might not be such a good idea to go to New York to see it.

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