The Odd Couple
Reception

The Odd Couple (1968)

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External reception

7.6
5 platform(s) · 7 ratings 45,573 votes
7.9/10 4,586 votes Synced 2026-07-25
7.6/10 40,291 votes Synced 2026-08-20
Audience 7.6/10 28 votes Synced 2026-07-19
Critics 8.6/10 Synced 2026-07-19
Audience 8.9/10 Synced 2026-07-17
Critics 9.7/10 Synced 2026-07-17
7.4/10 668 votes Synced 2026-09-12

External reviews

Kim Newman · Empire 100.00/100.00

Lemmon and Mathau's finest hour.

synced 2026-07-19
Marjorie Baumgarten · Austin Chronicle 78.00/100.00

Felix and Oscar are now part of the American mythos.

synced 2026-07-19
Staff (Not Credited) · TV Guide Magazine 75.00/100.00

The good news is that, as sitcom-style theater goes, The Odd Couple is often highly amusing, with Lemmon and Matthau ideally cast as prissy neatnik and unmitigated slob.

synced 2026-07-19
Staff (Not Credited) · Variety 90.00/100.00

The Odd Couple, Neil Simon's smash legit comedy, has been turned into an excellent film starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Simon's somewhat expanded screenplay retains the broad, as well as the poignant, laughs inherent in the rooming together of two men whose marriages are on the rocks.

synced 2026-07-19
Roger Ebert · Chicago Sun-Times 88.00/100.00

A funny screen version of a very funny (if not very significant) Broadway comedy. It does well as an evening's entertainment.

synced 2026-07-19
Martin Chilton · The Telegraph 100.00/100.00

What makes the film so charming is the comic interplay between Matthau and Lemmon.

synced 2026-07-19
Tasha Robinson · The Dissolve 90.00/100.00

Revisiting Saks’ screen version nearly 50 years later is like a class in how comedy and storytelling evolve, and how some aspects of a story endure over time, while others get sloughed away.

synced 2026-07-19
Staff (Not Credited) · Time 80.00/100.00

Playwright Neil Simon occasionally takes off his clowns' masks to show the humans beneath. In doing so, he has made his Odd Couple real people, with enough substance to cast shadows alongside the jokes.

synced 2026-07-19
Dave Kehr · Chicago Reader 75.00/100.00

For all its overfamiliarity, this is a good play, easily Simon's best, and Matthau and Lemmon inhabit it with grace and style.

synced 2026-07-19
Staff (Not Credited) · Time Out 70.00/100.00

Saks takes Neil Simon's play pretty much as it comes, but with Lemmon and Matthau to watch, and a generous quota of one-liners, who needs direction?

synced 2026-07-19

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