The Apartment

directed by Billy Wilder
Category: "Comedy"
Year of Release:1960
Date Added:04/03/2008
Date Watched:11/02/2005
Description:Jack Lemmon ... C.C. 'Bud' Baxter
Shirley MacLaine ... Fran Kubelik
Fred MacMurray ... Jeff D. Sheldrake
Ray Walston ... Joe Dobisch
My Rating:6

Reviews for The Apartment

Review - Apartment, The

C.C. Baxter is a peon in a huge Manhattan insurance company. He’s a bachelor and lives alone in his convenient apartment. Convenient to four mid-level executives who use it for their trysts with their mistresses while Baxter wanders the city alone. They promise to recommend him for promotion in return, so he goes along with it. Then Mr. Sheldrake finds out about the arrangement and negotiates his own deal. His “girl” is Fran Kubelik, the elevator girl at the insurance company. Baxter knows her and is attracted to her, but she keeps putting him off or standing him up. On Christmas Eve, Baxter, in disgusts, picks up a girl at a bar and takes her home. When he gets there, he finds Fran on his bed, passed out from an overdose of his sleeping pills. With the help of Dr. Dreyfuss who lives down the hall, he nurses her back to health. He decides he’s in love with her and isn’t going to allow Sheldrake to use the apartment anymore. When he goes in to tell Sheldrake, he is informed that Sheldrake has left his wife and that he, Baxter, is promoted to assistant director. Still it hurts, and as the week goes by, he decides he can’t take it anymore. On New Year’s Eve, he refuses Sheldrake the key and is fired. When Sheldrake mentions to Fran that Baxter is being unreasonable, Fran realizes she loves Baxter after all. She runs out on Sheldrake and ends up at Baxter’s apartment.

More sad than funny. Baxter has good intentions but lets others walk all over him for the sake of promotions. Fran wants to be decent but can’t help loving Sheldrake. There are a few mildly amusing moments, but it’s really not a comedy. I gave it a 6 as a sappy drama. There was one interesting line — “That’s the way it crumbles, cookiewise.”
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