It's too grim for most filmgoers to attempt to extract the juicier laugh lines.

| Apr 24, 2025

There are not as many laughs as in the original, but it is considerably more bearable.

| Mar 12, 2025

The Prisoner of Second Avenue is deftly put together.

| Mar 8, 2025

The action is essentially mechanical, since none of the events proceeds from character.

| Mar 7, 2025

Simon delivers his customary quote of searingly funny lines.

| Mar 7, 2025

It is a joy to see two top professionals at work, with no indication that it's work for them.

| Mar 7, 2025

Lemmon's descent into ill-concealed paranoia is a superb piece of acting, the graduations of which are almost unobservable so good is his technique.

| Mar 7, 2025

Melvin Frank's direction is sure and steady, letting Simon's comedy flow from the special performers assembled here.

| Mar 7, 2025

It remains... a very funny cinema-play for long stretches.

| Mar 7, 2025

"Prisoner" is most impressive when it is least funny; the laughter comes out of a painful craziness.

| Mar 7, 2025

The sight gags and one-liners could have come burlesque if Lemmon and Bancroft hadn't restrained themselves -- but they did, and it works.

| Mar 7, 2025

"Prisoner" may be inferior Simon, but that still puts it way above almost anything else being written.

| Mar 7, 2025

The big difference between this and previous Neil Simon works is that the gags are not quite so funny, and no less obtrusive.

| Mar 7, 2025

We are held at arm's length by shallow dialogue, predictable plot twists, overblown situations.

| Mar 7, 2025

Under Melvin Frank's direction, it's all pretty close to being tedious, the tedium enhanced by Marvin Hamlisch's borrowed music.

| Mar 7, 2025

It shows Simon attempting to extend his own comic territory by tackling serious subjects. I find the result both funny and moving.

| Mar 7, 2025

Neil Simon's rapid-fire gag plays simply don't translate well into film.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 7, 2025

Simon's art in arousing humorous reactions to traumatic situations is to be applauded, as is Melvin Frank's direction.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 7, 2025

The dialogue is unrelentingly comic, but the note of anguish sometimes wears thin under the closeup lens of the camera.

| Original Score: C+ | Mar 7, 2025

"The Prisoner of Second Avenue" is neither comedy nor tragedy nor good red herring, it is a bad tempered harangue, a testy diatribe which finally tries the patience.

| Mar 7, 2025