Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

GrimPrecise I'll tell you why so serious

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

fung0 It's not surprising to see some bad scores for this challenging little film. If you know nothing about it, be warned: this is one of the blackest 'comedies' you're ever going to encounter. But it's also one of Neil Simon's best works, cutting much deeper and sharper than simple little farces like The Odd Couple.Prisoner of Second Avenue tells the tale of a man coming totally unglued under the pressures of the modern world. Jack Lemmon plays a modern Job, suffering every trial a sadistic - but very up-to-date - God could imagine. Neil Simon brilliantly weaves in a gleam of underlying humor, which Lemmon brings out with his usual skill. But it's never more than a gleam; you have to be sensitive to it, or this film will seem like a dreary ordeal.In fact, far from being dreary, this is a remarkably joyous, uplifting film. It shows us that hope is always just inches away, if we can only see it. Our crushing problems are largely internal: what matters is how we meet them. Seeing that lesson, of course, is the challenge. Like the song says, when you've been down so long, it starts to look like up to you.Aside from its clever writing and fine performances, Prisoner of Second Avenue features some great New York ambiance, and a real feel for its time. This is a more personal, less-theatrical, less-contrived film than most of Simon's works.The Prisoner of Second Avenue is not just entertaining; it's therapeutic. Open yourself to the slightly masochistic pleasure of wallowing in it, and feel your own aches and neuroses burn away!

George Wright Movies like the Prisoner of Second Avenue, from the mid-1970's, make us realize how much the world has changed. New York City was typical of the times with property crime, unemployment, recession, union strikes, power outages, etc. making people feel uncomfortable with the quality of everyday life. When Mel suddenly loses his job after 22 years with the same company, he suffers from the anxiety of a man trying to find an explanation. Going over the edge, he takes to shouting mild expletives from his balcony at the prim and proper neighbours overhead. In those day, words like ass and hell were considered unfit for public use. Mel gets a bucket of water thrown at him for using such language within the earshot of children. The repartee between Edna and Mel is funny and off the wall but not nearly as much as the baby boom humour of the 1970's was to people at the time. The acting of Jack Lemmon as Mel and Anne Bancroft as Edna is outstanding although the lines have lost their zing. His tirades against the world and the plot against the working class is much less targeted than today's politics and the world of the one per cent. In those days, people were lashing out; now they want action against the rich, against ISIS, Not only have times changed but we don't joke about more sinister crimes like mass shootings, or attacks and bombings against innocents by groups far more dangerous than muggers and burglars. Traditional crime is down, only now replaced by fear of more serious crime. One amusing scene shows Mel chasing a young Sylvestre Stallone across the lawns and terraces of Central Park. Eventually Mel tackles and brings down the guy he sees as a young punk. A victory for him against the forces of evil? It is interesting to see his response. It is also informative to see how the couple come to terms with the changed circumstances.

paxton-12 Sorry people, this is marred by predictability and over-the-top acting. And, in 1975 could a humble clerk really have lived like that, when today you have to be practically a millionaire to live in a flat like that? Would even a nutty lady as played by Bancroft REALLY have left the door open, and could the robbers really have taken so much stuff in 5 minutes, and in broad daylight? The house is full of books, but just for show 'cuz these two obviously are not great readers. I usually don't leave the room till the films finished, but since I intuited EXACTLY what was going to happen, I came here to write these words. If you got hooked by this, more power to you; compare this to the sophisticated comedies of the thirties and forties, and you'll see what I mean.Both of these actors were capable of far better efforts, but I'll give it a four just so I don't get lynched. :~)

jzappa If Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue is less than an intense survey of a married couple impelled to nervous breakdown by the exasperations and disgrace of bourgeois living, it still achieves compelling thrust, both somber and hilarious, mostly the latter though. If Melvin Frank's direction is accomplished but not inventive, he's skillfully served by a cast largely populated by Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft, who launch vigorously sincere characterization as credible as the real Second Avenue and other New York locales captured by the Technicolor cameras.Lemmon is aggravated and angst-peppered owing to the defective air-conditioning and thoughtless neighbors in his high-rise apartment house, among other things. And, his tattered nerves aren't greatly relieved when he is fired by his on-the-fence company. As an unemployed ad executive, he can't be liable for being impatient with the unemployment office. And he shouldn't be condemned for pounding on flimsy walls, cursing the neighbors, who drench him with water in reprisal, and developing neuroses swollen by imposed joblessness and appointments with an evasive shrink.If Bancroft, as his genuinely devoted spouse who purposefully gets a job to sustain them, becomes overwrought and bemused to the point of paranoia, she, too, can't be blamed for her mounting worries when she ultimately must choose whether to receive financial help from her husband's apprehensive, if quizzical, siblings. Lemmon, no alien to Simon's work, and Bancroft are most believable and identifiable when unromanticized, and the strength of the piece is in their collaboration in roles as familiar in their comic reciprocating as many of New York's scuttling millions. And they get strong support from Odd Couple director Gene Saks, as Lemmon's prosperous, straightforward older brother and Elizabeth Wilson and Florence Stanley, as his suspicious sisters, not to mention a young Sylvester Stallone's hilarious scene, which could be the high point of the picture.They aren't in the thick of Greek tragedy or in humdrum sitcom TV. Simon is sober about a premise that isn't momentous and he reasonably swathes its earnestness with real laughs that pop up, including radio news items such as the update that a Polish freighter has just collided with the Statue of Liberty. And, with a cast whose members recognize the value of what they're saying and doing, the trials and tribulations of Second Avenue become a diversion.