Themes: Talking Animals, Stop the Wrecking Ball, Inner City Blues
Main Cast: Jerry O'Connell, Megan Ward, Jim Sterling, Shiek Mahmud-Bey, Jim Turner
Release Year: 1996
Country: US
Run Time: 80 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
This film is based on an innovative short film made for MTV about a guy living in a horrible downtown apartment filled with scores of mischievous, smart-alecky roaches. The story chronicles the adventures of Joe (Jerry O'Connell), a hapless rube from the rural Midwest who journeys to the wilds of New York City. Mugged repeatedly on his arrival, his luck seems to turn when he finds an affordable apartment in a very dubious neighborhood. Unfortunately, his landlord (Don Ho) is more interested in evicting or, if need be, murdering his tenants, so that the building can be turned into a (highly profitable) penitentiary. Joe finds the allies he needs in his apartment's cockroaches, who sing and dance their way into his heart. This film should be of interest for fans of 1930s musicals; it makes reference to Busby Berkeley's elaborate dance phantasmagorias and the odd water ballets of Esther Williams. Many of the scenes utilized real roaches who were "choreographed" via tiny filament harnesses and other devices. Animal rights activists will be pleased to note that no roaches were intentionally harmed during filming. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Chris Wedge - Animator, Meg Simon - Casting, Stephanie Maslansky - Costume Designer, Vebe Borge - First Assistant Director, John Payson - Director, Peter C. Frank - Editor, Griffin Dunne - Executive Producer, Judith McGrath - Executive Producer, Abby Terkuhle - Executive Producer, Carter Burwell - Composer (Music Score), Carter Burwell - Songwriter, Carol Spier - Production Designer, Peter Deming - Cinematographer, Diana Phillips - Producer, Bonni Lee - Producer, Rosa Howell-Thornhill - Sound/Sound Designer, Michael Turoff - Special Effects Supervisor, John Payson - Screenwriter, Elizabeth Shelton - Assistant Costumer Designer
Joe's Apartment is a 1996musical-serio-comicfilm starring Jerry O'Connell and Megan Ward and the first film produced by MTV Films. It was based on a short 1992 film first made for MTV (which was used as filler in between commercial breaks), but was also inspired by both the 1987 Japanese film Gokiburi-tachi No Tasogare (known as Twilight of the Cockroaches in the USA) and the American short film "Those Damn Roaches", also made in 1987. The main focus of the story is the fact that unbeknownst to many humans, roaches can talk but prefer not to since humans "smush first and ask questions later". They also sing (as they do many times in the movie) and even have their own public access channel. Actors providing the roaches' voices included Billy West, Jim Turner and Dave Chappelle.
Plot
Penniless and straight out of an Iowa college, Joe moves to New York needing an apartment and a job. With the fortuitous death of Mrs. Grotowski, an artist named Walter Shit helps Joe to take over the last rent-controlled apartment in a building slated for demolition. If Senator Downing can empty the building, he can make way for the prison he intends to build there, and uses thug Alberto Bianco and his nephews Vlad and Jesus to intimidate tenants.
Joe discovers he has 20 to 30 thousand roommates, all of them talking, singing cockroaches grateful that a slob has moved in. Led by Ralph, the sentient, tune-savvy insects scare away the thugs in an act of enlightened self-interest that endears them to their human meal ticket.
Tired of living on handouts from Mom back in Iowa and after a series of dead-end jobs ruined by his well-intentioned six-legged roomies, Joe finds himself the unskilled drummer in Walter Shit’s band. Hanging posters for SHIT, he encounters Senator Downing’s daughter Lily promoting her own project, a community garden to occupy the vacant site surrounding Joe’s building.
A crappy gift to Lily while working on her garden is enough to woo her back to Joe's apartment, where the cockroaches break a promise to keep out of his business and a panicked Lily flees, only to discover the garden she’d worked on has been burned to the ground. During a fight with his roommates over his spoiled romantic evening, the building suffers the same fate as the garden.
A mutual truce between our hapless and now homeless roommates leads the cockroaches to "call in favors from every roach, rat and pigeon in New York City" to try to make amends to Joe. Overnight, the roaches scour New York to gather materials to convert the entire area into a garden and take care of all the necessary paperwork to ensure harmony reigns over all.
