Grumpier Old Men is a 1995 romantic comedy film, and a sequel to the 1993 film Grumpy Old Men. The film stars Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ann-Margret, and Sophia Loren, with Burgess Meredith, Daryl Hannah, Kevin Pollak, Katie Sagona, Ann Morgan Guilbert. Grumpier Old Men was directed by Howard Deutch, with the screenplay written by Mark Steven Johnson and the original music score composed by Alan Silvestri. The film was Meredith's final motion picture appearance. He was already suffering from Alzheimer's disease and had to be gently coached through his role in the film.
Plot summary
Several months after the events at the end of Grumpy Old Men, the lifelong feud between Max (Walter Matthau) and John (Jack Lemmon) has cooled, and their children, Melanie (Daryl Hannah) and Jacob (Kevin Pollak), have become engaged after a brief relationship.
The spring and summer fishing season is also in full swing in Wabasha, with the annual quest to catch "Catfish Hunter", the lake's largest catfish, consuming the fishing community. However, the local bait shop (which closed due to the death of its proprietor, Chuck, in the first film) is in danger of being taken over by a recent arrival in town, Maria Ragetti (Sophia Loren), and being turned into a fancy Italian restaurant. Max and John join forces to try and sabotage the restaurant and succeed to a point, enough to make Ariel force John to go over to the restaurant and apologize to Maria for what he's done. Originally John doesn't want to do it and is encouraged by Max to tell Ariel so, which results in John moving in with Max as Ariel throws him out of the house. John eventually breaks down and goes to apologize to Maria after realizing that Max lives a slovenly (almost squalor-like) lifestyle at his home.
Things go awry, however, when John and Maria trade shots of grappa over the conversation. Eventually, John drinks too much and passes out, waking up the next morning in the restaurant and having Ariel and Max believe that the two are having an affair. Two things are revealed by Maria's mother Francesca following the confrontation- the first is that she and John's father are having a relationship, and that Maria in fact is infatuated with Max, to everyone's surprise.
While out in his boat one day Max finds Maria on the lake fishing, and the shared interest helps to begin a romance between the two. However, Maria calls it off thanks to Francesca (Ann Morgan Guilbert) reminding her of five failed marriages in the past, and Max is bewildered and disappointed.
To make things even further complicated Jacob and Melanie's wedding plans are causing the couple stress thanks to their fathers' apparent inability to plan a proper wedding. After John decides to book "Handsome Hans", Wabasha's "polka king" for the wedding Melanie finally snaps and she and Jacob get into a huge argument which results in the wedding being called off and the two to live separately. Upon hearing the news John and Max call off their truce and reignite their feud.
Once again, Max and John resort to childish pranks to get back at each other, which include Max broadcasting a video of John sitting still, naked, for a statue Ariel was making of him and John's cat Slick spending the night inside Max's truck clawing the vinyl on the seats. This leads to the climax of the feud as Max adopts a one-eyed bulldog named Lucky, who chases Slick into John's house and causes the statue of John to break. Seeing the destruction of the statue Ariel moves out, telling John she isn't coming back until the two are done fighting.
Saddened, John goes to the lake to fish with his father (Burgess Meredith) and get some advice of what to do about what had just happened, only to find him dead on the couch he was sitting on. Grandpa Gustafson is cremated, and his ashes scattered in the lake, and Max and John call off their feud again. The two also help Jacob and Melanie reunite after their brief estrangement, and the wedding is apparently back on. Furthermore, John convinces Max to try again with Maria, telling him to "park (his) stupid pride" and tell her how he really feels. Max does and the two rekindle their romance.
Much like the first film, a wedding is to take place at the end of the film. However, Max and John decide to take one last chance at catching Catfish Hunter before going. The two are able to catch him, but John convinces Max to throw him back saying that his father tried to catch him for 20 years and that the two belonged in the lake together. Max does and the duo rushes to the church for the wedding, which turns out to be Max's wedding to Maria (which is not revealed until Max and John arrive at the church; it is implied that it is Jacob and Melanie's wedding, but the two had eloped prior to this). Max and Maria are wed and drive away in the limousine to their reception to be held at Maria's restaurant, which will also serve as the town's bait shop again. As in the first film, a trick was played on the wedding party in the limo on the way to the reception, as someone let Max's dog into the back seat to stink it up.
Subplots
As in Grumpy Old Men several subplots are present in Grumpier Old Men. In addition to the sabotage of the restaurant and Max and John's poor wedding planning, Grandpa Gustafson again shows his perverted side. Unlike in the first film, where he had designs on most of the women of Wabasha, in the second film Grandpa's perverted streak is largely due to his desire to have a relationship with Fracesca Ragetti; at one point in the film, it is suggested that he succeeds, with Francesca finally being charmed by his overtures and dropping a rose into the water after his cremated remains are dumped in the lake. A second subplot with Grandpa Gustafson concerns his advancing age of 95, as he remarks that God must have forgotten about him. (When he dies, John remarks "Looks like God remembered you, Pop.") In the first film, Melanie's daughter Allie was a toddler, but in the second film, her character was advanced to grade school age and played by a different actress, with added hints that she did not accept her mother's relationship with Jacob, but that had changed by the end of the movie.
Reception
Grumpier Old Men grossed $71 million domestically on a budget of $25 million. While some have said that this was less successful than the original, Grumpier Old Men beat its predecessor's total of $70 million and cost $10 million less to make than the original.
Sequel
Following Grumpier Old Men's box-office success, Warner Bros. suggested making a third film in the series entitled Grumpiest Old Men. The plot was going to involve Max and Maria going to Italy on a honeymoon where they are confronted by Maria's ex-husband (to be played by Marcello Mastroianni), who would attempt to contest Maria's marriage to Max on the grounds that his own divorce from Maria was never finalized. Lemmon, Matthau, and Loren were going to commit to making the sequel a few years after Grumpier Old Men, but due to the fact Lemmon and Matthau had a pair of box-office flops starting with 1997's Out to Sea and later in 1998 with The Odd Couple II, Warner Bros. scrapped the sequel and plans to make a third film in the series were cancelled, becoming final with the passings of Matthau and Lemmon in 2000 and 2001, respectively.
Cast
External links
