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The first sign that a movie is going wrong is when you feel compelled to check your wristwatch. The next sign is when you realize there's at least another hour to go.
Duplex, a hack comedy from director Danny DeVito, had me checking at the 25-minute mark, then 10 minutes later and five minutes after that. Pretty soon the watch face was more interesting than anything on screen. This is precisely the sort of uncool comedy - with tired gags about the Clapper, Riverdance, and other amateur night punch lines - that Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore shouldn't be caught doing unless they owe a big favor or maybe a debt to the Rock's retrieval expert in The Rundown.
Stiller and Barrymore play Alex and Nancy, a married couple who, we learn in a needlessly cute animated prologue, can't find a place to live in Manhattan. They look across the bridge to Brooklyn, where a real estate agent (Harvey Fierstein) has a honey deal. A duplex looks like a bargain until the elderly resident upstairs (Eileen Essel), locked into an $88-per-month rent-control deal, becomes a bother.
Making her give up that apartment to these selfish post-yuppies is the core of Duplex. They try bribing her, infecting her with a deadly flu, even hiring a hit man, and there's never any indication that she deserves that kind of treatment. Each problem in Duplex could be easily solved with patience, earplugs or backbone, yet Alex and Nancy always choose the most difficult solution, the one that sets up the next allegedly uproarious moment.
DeVito created a terrific senior citizen creature in Throw Momma from the Train, one who needed to be put out of everyone's misery. By making the tenant sweet, Duplex loses any chance of making the audience pull for Alex and Nancy. By the time it's obvious that the neighbor isn't so sweet after all, it's impossible to muster any sympathy for them.
All that's left are bad memories of watching Stiller stooping to the kind of comedy he used to skewer: vomit gags, poop jokes and an array of shocked reactions that barely conceal the actor's embarrassment. Barrymore isn't a capable comedian, but at least DeVito didn't need to strip away all of her charm to play this housewife.
Duplex is a turgid waste of talent, film and one commodity that's no fun seeing slip away on a wristwatch: your time.
DuplexGrade: D-
Director: Danny DeVito
Cast: Ben Stiller, Drew Barrymore, Eileen Essel, Harvey Fierstein, James Remar, Swoosie Kurtz, Justin Theroux
Screenplay: Larry Doyle, John Hamburg
Rating: PG-13; crude humor, profanity, brief violence, sexual situations
Running time: 91 min.