Alex Rose (Ben Stiller) and Nancy Kendricks (Drew Barrymore) are looking for a place. They find a nice duplex in Brooklyn for a very reasonable price except Mrs. Connelly (Eileen Essell) is the rent control tenant upstairs. Kenneth (Harvey Fierstein) is the real estate agent. Officer Dan (Robert Wisdom) comes in to investigate when the couple keeps getting in trouble over the little old lady.

Director Danny DeVito is pushing hard for this slapstick dark comedy. I find little of it funny. I really don't like this couple and I like the little old lady even less. The old lady is too fake and really annoying. It's a lot of fake niceties and passive aggressiveness. I don't like passive aggressive characters sometimes and I really dislike this one. As annoying as it is for the couple, it is more annoying to watch them being annoyed. The more annoying the annoying old lady gets annoying the annoying couple, the more annoyed I got about the annoying antics. I did like the reveal or maybe I like that it was over.

This geriatric variation of Home Alone, with more of a dash of The Ladykillers and an obscure French film called Tatie Danielle thrown in, is given a cartoonish presentation as the new owners of a Brooklyn duplex deal with the outwardly sweet upstairs tenant they can't evict. A series of juvenile visual gags are shot out like machine gun bullets, with the seemingly sweet old Irish doll tossing out insults at the couple with passive aggressive glee. Seemingly immortal, the old buzzard becomes the road-runner like target of the couple's coyote where you begin to hope that for once the coyotes will kill their target. This leaves the viewer with a slight guilt complex which reflects on the general mean-spiritedness of the script.

Hysterically funny much of the time, this can't escape the fact that its laughs come from that part of the human soul that hates humanity. The young couple are in a no-win situation and the genuinely evil hag has them by the scrotum. The attempted murder sequences are sometimes uncomfortable to watch, even though the first part of the film makes you want to see them succeed. I would have liked to had a different leading man as I never have seen the appeal of Ben Stiller, but found no fault with Drew Barrymore, once again truly likable. As the old lady, Eileen Essell takes the role and runs with it, being alternately a combination of Old Mother Hubbard and the tenant of a gingerbread house. A perfect supporting cast (including raspy Harvey Fierstein as a shady real estate agent, Wallace Shawn as Barrymore's irascible boss and Swoozie Kurtz as Stiller's publisher) helps the surprising twists and turns which alternately hurt the stomach from laughing too much and the guilt which goes along with it.

The writer Alex Rose (Ben Stiller) and his beloved wife Nancy Kendricks (Drew Barrymore),who works in an advertisement agency, want to buy a house and cannot afford an apartment in Manhattan, but they find a wonderful old duplex in Brooklyn for living. The house, which has three fireplaces, is a dream, the price is very reasonable and the only inconvenient is the existence of the old tenant Mrs. Connelly (Eileen Essel) on the second floor. Although aware that they can not move the old lady from her apartment, the young couple decides to buy the duplex. When they move to their new home, their lives become a hell, due to the nasty Mrs. Connelly. "Duplex" is a very funny black comedy, directed by Danny DeVito, who is a specialist in this genre. Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore show a great chemistry, but Eileen Essel "steals the show" in the role of a sweet & nasty old lady. There are two plot points in the end of the story that I liked a lot. "Duplex" is not a masterpiece, but make the viewer, who likes black humor, laughs a lot and is a good entertainment. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Duplex"