The Age of Commercialism

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Jack Lemmon's cameraman Hinkle didn't know he was going to get pummeled on the field by a football player moving way too fast. But he also didn't know that his brother in law, good old Gingrich (man that name, hey, who knew then what we know now), a lawyer who is known as a whiplash-style bottom-feeder, sees an opportunity: via an old injury from when he was a kid, make him THE guy to go up against the insurance company where those grumps never pay out! Except that, yeah, that's how Gingrich sees it, and puts forward the scam to make Hinkle seem totally nerve damaged and practically crippled by what happened to sue the companies involved with the TV network and so on. What could go wrong? How about Hinkle's ex, who Hinkle is no fan of in the slightest (the "B" word comes out and this is 1966, right when this was just allowed for like the first time almost in a movie), and the football player who tackled Hinkle, who is the one really genuine guy out to do whatever he can to make up for what he did. Will he be ruined too, by way of the guilt eating him up inside? It's hard not to compare this to another cynical view of humanity in action, Ace in the Hole, where Billy Wilder's scope was about the press and how prescient that seemed to sensationalized news coverage. I think Fortune Cookie is funnier, though only a little, as it has stretches where Wilder (and co-writer Diamonds) is more comfortable having his characters settling in to the fakery that they set up for themselves, with Matthau, earning the hell his Oscar for his work here, leading the orchestration of the scam and having to keep it up with the other lawyers, the football player, and two detectives doing an almost comical level of surveillance. But it's no less cutting a view of how people try and rationalize to themselves what is right and what is wrong as Ace was; another film decades later, American Hustle, would look at the same world but even deeper into the con part of it, though a difference here is that Wilder expects other characters (for the most part) will believe the injuries Hinkle carries with him.In this sense it's also an off-shoot of Irma la Douce, however I prefer this take on people creating fake worlds since that one the onus was on one character, and it was just too farcical to take seriously (at least for my taste, it may vary for others). With The Fortune Cookie, part of the success is Lemmon and Mathtau together, but it's also how other characters look at them; in a way this movie works not just because of them, but because of Ron Rich as the football player, as the straight man who is good enough to react to a force of acting nature like Lemmon. They all make this story into a rich black comedy where the tone is maybe saltier than what Wilder did before (or it just fits into what he did already, only now it's into the world of lawyers and how funny it is to see guys in a room suss out a settlement, which you wouldn't think is funny but... Matthau). Adding to all of this is a great structure, separated by title cards like it's a book, but each chapter is humorous too.Is it a little bleak? Yeah, maybe. But by the end Wilder does provide not so much hope but a part of the reality that is somewhat reassuring: if you can fess up to what you did, and you're not a d*** about it, it opens up a friendship or connection to another person. Hint: it's not with the ex-wife.

While Walter Matthau was quite in demand on TV and movies before 1965, this was truly his breakthrough year in terms of his profession. First, he was cast on Broadway in Neil Simon's The Odd Couple as Oscar Madison. And then, Billy Wilder cast him here to play shyster lawyer William "Whiplash Willie" Gingrich opposite leading man Jack Lemmon leading to a fruitful collaboration in movies for the next several years that paired Lemmon and Matthau together with Wilder making at least one more good film with them (The Front Page as the next one after that he made with them-Buddy Buddy-marked a less-than-glorious-end to his directing career). Lemmon is a CBS cameraman who gets knocked down by football player Ron Rich though he doesn't suffer much. Matthau is Lemmon's brother-in-law who wants to exploit his "malady" to get large amounts from an insurance company. Judi West is Lemmon's ex-wife who comes back to him when she hears about it. And Cliff Osmond plays a sneaky investigator for the insurance company. Plenty of cynical laughs are provided by Wilder & I.A.L Diamond's script with most of those punchlines said by Matthau though when Lemmon is alone with the Rich character, there are also some touching scenes of them talking. In summary, The Fortune Cookie was one of the better comedies from a period-the late '60s-not always known for great funny films with Matthau winning his well-deserved Oscar for this role.

First let me say that nobody handles the combination of pathos and comedy like Billy Wilder.   One need only view classics like Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, and The Apartment to become convinced of this.  And, as well as he handled the seriocomic, he was just as good at straight comedy (Some Like It Hot, One, Two, Three).  Once in a great while, however, Wlder directed a film in which it appears that he was unsure of which way to go.  I give as examples Irma la Douce and this film, The Fortune Cookie.The Fortune Cookie is a seriocomic turn that is just aching to be a straight comedy.  The wonderful, over-the-top performance by Walter Matthau as "Whiplash" Willie Gingrich clashes somewhat jarringly with the serious plot line of the troubled football player, portrayed rather woodenly by Ron Rich.  And, while we are used to flawed protagonists from Wilder, Jack Lemmon's character, Harry Hinkle, is difficult to root for, as he is almost as venal as Willie, but not nearly as funny.  The overall effect is that while you may count your fingers after shaking hands with Willie, you still wish him well because he makes you feel good, but with Harry, you get a slightly distasteful feeling, even when he is being heroic.  Judi West and Cliff Osmond deliver finely tuned, restrained comedic performances that complement Matthau's Fieldsian shyster, but Ron Rich's "Boom-Boom" Jackson is sadly underdeveloped and one-dimensional, as if Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond were reluctant to have an African-American character made light of.  When one puts the film into historical context, this is understandable, yet one can't help but think that the viewing audiences of 1966 were probably ready for a less than dead serious black man, and had "Boom-Boom" been included in the fun, this could have been, if not a breakthrough film, at least a much better one, and possibly another Wilder/Diamond classic.All that having being said, this is a very funny movie, delivering plenty of outright horselaughs, and it is worth seeing for Matthau's performance alone.  The black and white cinematography is also a standout.  This is one of the last few feature films to be shot in black and white not consciously attempting to be retro, and Joseph LaShelle's handling of the medium in both location and set shots helped make the drab environs of Cleveland almost beautiful, earning him a well-deserved Oscar nomination.

......and not for the better, either. Movie NOT recommended for anyone under fifty, (I'll tell you why in a minute.).Showing my age here, but I saw this movie in 1966 with my parents. Believe it or not, the premise of this movie was a COMEDY in 1966. I mean, suing the NFL and the City of Cleveland cause a cameraman got knocked down by a running back? A lawsuit like this was considered OUTLANDISH in those days, which was why the picture was almost unbelievable in the 1960s. Nowadays it would considered routine, and that's why no one under 50 should see this film- they'd say, "What's wrong with that?" Great acting by Matthau, almost every line hysterical.Always a pleasure to watch, again and again........