Grumpy Old Men is a 1993 romantic comedy film starring Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, and Ann-Margret, with Burgess Meredith, Daryl Hannah, Kevin Pollak, Katie Sagona, Ossie Davis, and Buck Henry. Directed by Donald Petrie, the screenplay was written by Mark Steven Johnson, who also wrote the sequel, Grumpier Old Men (1995). The original music score was composed by Alan Silvestri.
Plot summary
Two elderly Wabasha, Minnesota bachelors, John Gustafson (Lemmon) and Max Goldman (Matthau), despite having been friends early in life and living next door to each other for years, have not gotten along since childhood and carry on a rivalry over basically anything and everything they can think of, especially both men's favorite pastime of fishing (in this case, ice fishing). The usual linchpin in this portion of their rivalry involves Max always coming home with a fairly large catch of fish while John only comes home with maybe two or three fish each time out, although John claims he's caught more and throws back what he doesn't eat.
The rivalry also includes both men playing childish pranks on each other, such as Max programming a universal television remote to change John's channels through his window, and John throwing a dead fish in Max's truck. Despite all of this, though, at various points in the movie John and Max are able to carry on civil conversations, which tend to degrade into bickering again by the time they're done.
It is shown that the entire rivalry got started over John's stealing of Max's childhood sweetheart, a woman named May to whom John was unhappily married for 20 years. Max went on to marry a woman named Amy whom both he and John believe was the best thing to happen to him, but he has always harbored bad feelings over John's marriage to May.
Another subplot to the rivalry revolves around John owing thousands of dollars in back taxes to the IRS and his continued attempts to avoid a tenacious field agent named Elliot Snyder (Henry) who is after him to recover the money.
The rivalry gets more heated when a new neighbor, Ariel Truax (Ann-Margret), moves into the neighborhood and across from their homes, with Max and John both competing for her affections. Although Max and John are not the only people smitten by the widowed Ariel, they seem to be the two men in the neighborhood that she is most interested in.
Eventually Ariel begins spending more time with John to Max's dismay. The feud comes to a head at the lake one day when Max drives his truck into John's ice shanty while he is fishing inside and pushes it across the lake into thin ice, causing it to sink to the bottom of the lake, with John escaping mere seconds before it breaks through the surface. The two men then get into a fight over John's relationship with Ariel, with Max accusing John of stealing her from him like he did before with May. Although John tries to convince Max that he is better off, Max decides to shame John into ending the relationship by telling John that he can't support Ariel once the IRS takes his house and saying that he "ain't got time" to wait around for another Amy to come back into his life. Max's tactics work and John lets Ariel go, becoming depressed in the process. The depression is worsened when Ariel and Max begin dating shortly thereafter.
Christmas Eve comes around and a still-depressed John is ready to welcome his daughter Melanie and her daughter for a visit, only to find that Melanie's husband Mike, from whom she had separated and who John is not particularly fond of, has joined them. After getting into a fight with Mike over his drinking, John storms out of the house and heads down to a local bar.
At the request of his son Jacob and Melanie, Max decides to go down to the bar to try and calm John down, but is unaware of why John is so upset. Max's ignorance of the reason causes John to leave the bar in a huff and begin walking back to his house, telling Max that it doesn't make a difference because he got what he wanted. Some time later, Max decides to leave and go after John, and finds him in a snowbank after having suffered a major heart attack while walking.
Max visits John in the hospital the next day and sees him clinging to life, and decides to put their feud on hold. He decides that perhaps John and Ariel are better off together, and goes to tell her what happened. Ariel visits John and instantly the two appear to fall in love again.
While John is recovering in the hospital, Max decides to try and help him with his IRS trouble, which he has learned has arisen not out of fraud, but simply a mere mistake on John's part when his ex-wife had a part-time job. Max learns that the initial $13,000 that John owes has snowballed to more than $57,000 due to penalties, late charges and interest, and gets little sympathy from Snyder. Max barricades John's house shut and gets Jacob, by now newly elected mayor of Wabasha, to get an injunction against the IRS from seizing John's property. Max then throws a dead fish in Snyder's car and booby-traps the roof over the front door, causing a small avalanche of snow to fall upon Snyder.
John and Ariel get married several months later, with Max providing two gifts. One is to help pay off John's taxes, thanks to Jacob's influence of getting the penalties and interest waived and Max putting up the $13,000 as a loan. The other is the ever present dead fish in the limousine the newlyweds ride away in. During John and Ariel's honeymoon, Max decides to get on with his life by going to a VFW event in hopes of meeting a woman. His son, Jacob, takes that opportunity to go over to John's house to meet with Melanie.
Subplots
In addition to the main plot of the film several subplots are employed. Among them:
- Melanie's marital problems, which result in separation and (later) divorce.
- Jacob's campaign for mayor.
- Jacob and Melanie's friendship, which blossoms into a romantic relationship at the end of the movie.
- John's father, J.W. "Grandpa" Gustafson, and his views on the women of Wabasha, mostly perverse.
- John and Max visiting a bait shop owned by their mutual friend Chuck. Chuck is the first to date Ariel, but passes away later on.
Reception
Grumpy Old Men was one of the biggest surprise hits of the year at the time of its release. It earned a domestic total of $70 million, well above its budget of $35 million. It has also been noted as one of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau's best films by many and has managed to gain a successful cult following over the years on home video and television. Both Lemmon and Matthau, who were more or less retired by this time, enjoyed a rebirth of their careers due to the movie's success. They continued to work steadily until their deaths by the end of the decade.
Cast and Crew
Bonus scenes
During the closing credits, they show a blooper reel from the making of the film. Jack Lemmon and Burgess Meredith repeat the scene at the window where they are watching Chuck woo the fair Ariel...only Meredith uses almost every off-color way to describe sex, and Lemmon does a yeoman's job of not breaking up.
After the closing credits, a bonus scene appears on screen where Walter Matthau is sitting in his bathtub. He looks to the viewers and says, "If I knew there was going to be a nude scene, I would have asked for another million!"
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