Film review: The Fortune Cookie (1966)

This one should be a winner: it's Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in their first pairing!  In a film by Billy Wilder!  And it's a cynical comedy!  And it certainly had its moments, but somehow it didn't really do it for me.  Perhaps part of the problem is that it's squarely a sixties movie and I just think Wilder's sensibility works better in the 40s and 50s.  Or perhaps it's because I didn't really know who to root for - let me explain.  The film begins at a Cleveland Browns home game.  (Surprisingly huge stadium!  If you think about how many fewer people there were back then, it seems like the entire population of Cleveland is crammed into that stadium.  I guess there weren't that many entertainment options back then.)  A running back gets the ball and sprints up the field.  Jack Lemmon (Harry Hinkle) is a cameraman filming the action on the sideline.  Suddenly the running back gets forced off the field and clobbers Hinkle who does an impressive backflip over a rolled-up tarpaulin behind him.  He's out cold and an ambulance comes and stretchers him off.  This clearly upsets the running back (Luther "Boom Boom" Jackson) who can't seem to pay attention in the huddle as he's worrying about Hinkle.  Cut to the hospital, where Hinkle's sister, mother, brother-in-law and niece and nephew are waiting (the latter two are skateboarding around - which was jarring, as I thought skateboards were invented in the 70s).  The distraught mother (re-)tells the story of how the sister persuaded Harry to jump off the roof when they were kids and this caused Harry to have a "compressed vertebra".  At this, the brother in law (who is, of course, Walter Matthau, playing ambulance-chasing lawyer Willie Gingrich (clearly a cursed name))'s ears to prick up, and he goes to a pay phone (which he pays for by retrieving a dime his kids have just placed in a collection box for "unwed mothers" (it's a Catholic hospital)) and announces that Harry Hinkle is suing the Browns and CBS for a million dollars.  He has realized that the vertebra will (a) show up on an X-ray, and (b) it won't be obvious that he's had it since childhood.  He briefs Harry on the plot and Harry is initially dead-set against it (saying he feels fine) until his ex-wife calls to check up on him.  He bad-mouths her to Willie, who immediately sees that Harry is still carrying a torch for her and persuades him that his scheme is the way to win her back.  Almost immediately "Boom Boom" shows up, with flowers for Harry, clearly still feeling very guilty... and there you have the outlines of the plot.  Matthau's Gingrich has his eyes on the prize, but it requires shepherding Lemmon along against his better judgment.  The insurance company hires a hot-shot three-lawyer team (who have palatial offices in the same building as Gingrich's squalid, cramped office, yet are clearly no match for his cunning and legal knowledge) who in turn hire a private investigator to watch Hinkle like a hawk for signs of fakery.  So Hinkle has to go around in wheelchair (a fancy electric one paid for by Boom Boom, Lemmon's mastery of which provides several very funny visual moments) with a neck-and-back brace.  His wife (who is a trampy singer in a band, the leader of which she ran off from Hinkle to be with) shows up and is instantly wise to Gingrich's scheme and just wants in on it to jump start her stalled career, but convinces Hinkle that she's reformed and loves him and wants to get back together.  She displaces Boom Boom, who has become Hinkle's mother hen, even cooking for him and acting as his physical therapist, and whose focus (and sobriety) has gone to pot.  And therein lies my problem: Hinkle clearly feels bad about how his faking is affecting the good-hearted football player, so it's hard not to want the truth to come out, but at the same time we're rooting for Matthau's scheming Gingrich to win one over the pompous lawyers upstairs from him.  This is all in keeping with Wilder's cynical world view (and a reminder of the excellent Carole Lombard film Nothing Sacred) but somehow it just makes me anxious.  Lemmon and Matthau are excellent, of course (although Lemmon isn't given as much to do as you'd like - although the scene when he finally gives up the pretense is pretty epic) but they're not helped that much by the supporting cast (except maybe the lumbering private investigator, who finally gets Hinkle to crack by the rather jarring tactic of using racist insults about Boom Boom), none of whom went on to much.  All in all, some great moments, but decidedly a second-tier Wilder film.