THE PRISONER OF SECOND AVENUE DIRECTED BY MELVIN FRANK WARNER HOME VIDEO THIS ...

NER OF SECOND AVENUE DIRECTED BY MELVIN FRANK WARNER HOME VIDEO

THIS 1975 COMEDY, based on a Neil Simon play, is more notable for its pitch-perfect evocation of Manhattan apartment life than its ostensible story of unemployment and familial strife. Starring Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft as Mel and Edna, a middle-aged couple driven to distraction by the constant annoyances of daily life, The Prisoner of Second Avenue is only occasionally funny, but is a release of urban aggression that will serve as a comfort to most New Yorkers.

The hassles will be intimately familiar to any resident of the city: honking cabs, barking dogs, loud neighbors, small, poorly constructed apartments—the list goes on. Mel is bitter about how little all his hard work has actually gotten him, and deathly afraid that, having lost his job, even this small modicum of comfort will vanish, never to return. Like an East Coast precursor to Michael Douglas in Falling Down, Lemmon engages in small battles with the city that he finds so oppressive, never actually winning, but enjoying the struggle nonetheless. Not a particularly good movie, but a strangely familiar one.