18 April 2011

Joe's Apartment


This is a film my wife bought as a DVD at the supermarket Carrefour in La Châtre.
"If you haven't seen it, you have to, it's a 'classic''".
As I wouldn't question my wife's judgement, I took her advice.

Well, I have seen many song- and dance films with different artists but singing and dancing cockroaches must be the first time, even though 'insects' in films appeared early through not least the cinematographer Ladislav Starevicz (Władysław Starewicz) and his films made during the early 1900's (in English): 'The Revenge of a Kinematograph Cameraman'; 'The Insects Christmas'; 'The Ant and the Grasshopper' among others.

In this 'insect-film' we get to meet a young man - Joe (Jerry O'Connell) - who arrives to New York for the first time.
Being somewhat naïve, he is robbed at least three times during the first ten meters of walk from the bus he came with.
All his money disappears and now he quickly have to find a job and somewhere to live.
Through a 'friend' and his advices and two musclemen scaring people away from a house, he happens to be the 'owner' of an apartment, filled with dirt, garbage and cockroaches!
After a while he get to know that the house is going to be demolished in order to make room for a giant prison. The man behind this project is a senator by the name of Doughterty (Robert Vaughn) and the musclemen is hired by him, now targeting our Mr Nice Guy.
Luckily for him, he's got his cockroaches, a friendship that didn't start off to well but gradually developed - like his relationship with the 'green finger'-daughter of the senator, Lily (Megan Ward).

Of course everything ends well and if this is a film made in order to improve the reputation and create understanding for the cockroaches in the world, I think it succeeded. Who can resist dancing and singing cockroaches? I can't!

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