The greatest movie ever!

Admirable film.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Neil Simon kind of owned the 1970's/80's. Either he had a new play coming out or one of his old ones was being made into a movie. I saw many of them in one incarnation or another -- 'The Odd Couple', 'Brighton Beach Memoirs', 'Biloxi Blues', 'California Suite', etc. -- but giving them another look decades later I'd have to say my patience with Mr. Simon's work has worn about as thin as it can go. Simply put, his characters never shut up. When they leave the stage and venture onto film, this becomes a problem.'Plaza Suite' is an excellent example of the overly-talky, stagnant result obtained from an unimaginatively filmed play. Walter Matthau, a Simon staple, plays three roles, in three separate stories taking place in the same seventh-floor suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Maureen Stapleton is so annoying as Matthau's wife in the first segment that I found myself wanting to marry her just so I could have the pleasure of leaving her. The second vignette is so dull I almost turned it off. In the third, Matthau's character climbs out the window of the suite onto a ledge. As I was thinking back to my time living in New York, doubting the fact that there is in fact a ledge at the seventh-floor level, the film obligingly cuts to a shot of a man on a ledge at the Plaza… obviously at the fourth floor, and there are none higher. Thanks, movie… saved me Googling it. What arrogant writer would not only state a falsehood about a well-known landmark, but then show that what he has just stated is untrue? Neil Simon, folks; owner of the 70's and 80's. If he wants a ledge on the 7th floor of the Plaza, they'd better start building one for him. He's Neil Simon.There is, naturally, an exception to every rule. I enjoyed 'Murder By Death' very much, and I even think I like it better now than I did when it first came out. Stellar cast, excellent writing, checked off all the boxes. 'The Goodbye Girl' is another one that holds up very well. I also have a place in my heart for one of Simon's lesser-known works, 'I Ought to be in Pictures'. But 'Plaza Suite' and its ilk have seen their day. Mr. Simon is a prolific writer, but his writing is repetitive and many of his characters seem one-dimensional in this day and age. If you have the chance to see a local community theater do 'Plaza Suite', you might enjoy it in a retro kind of way. Don't bother with the film adaptation.

I sat down to watch this film because of the three wonderful actresses in the cast - Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Harris and Lee Grant - and I've never been disappointed by Arthur Hiller. I've been slow to warm to Neil Simon, but "The Sunshine Boys" had me in stitches. I mention this to indicate that I had reasonable expectations for this movie.Now I have to be honest and admit that I could only watch one segment, it left such a nasty taste in my mouth. In it, Neil Simon presents us with a marriage that has turned sour and seems to have lost any reason for continuing. Trouble is, the pair just aren't sympathetic or particularly interesting. Never mind the husband (Walter Matthau), Maureen Stapleton as his wife drove ME crazy! Arriving, it seems, right off the set of "Bye Bye Birdie", she prowls the hotel suite, nattering incessantly and hopping from place to place like a sparrow on speed, with that irksome camera constantly pursuing her. I don't wish to sound impatient or cruel. I know she plays a doormat begging for crumbs of respect, and I know that whatever happens (past the final fade-out) she'll get the short end of the stick, and I did feel sorry for her, but her neediness and whining were irritating. As for the husband, he's a heel, plain and simple. The story provides no surprising or interesting revelations. At the end, having sat through the entire segment, I wanted to know the outcome. No such luck. Instead, there's an unmerited and annoying void between the moment when the husband strides out of the suite in the evening to meet with his "secretary" and the wife hops out of the hotel in the morning.When the second segment started - "Just one drink," insists one of the characters (a warning to me that there would be many more) - and the creepy new Matthau persona loomed and it looked as if I was going to be stuck in that same hideous suite, with its puke green and yellow palette, for another forty minutes, I turned the movie off, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Not very funny or interesting. All three of the skits are pretty boring. I could hardly keep myself awake during the second one, I only watched the third one because i heard it was the best of the three, It was just as bad as the first two. Walter Matthau is a fine actor but not in here.

Had the entire film been as funny as the last segment, I would have rated it higher. The first 2 were full of dull, sexy, or bitchy dialogue, but the last was a real ripper. The distraught mom and the overwrought dad had me in the floor with their idiotic antics. I don't care for Neil Simon comedies; at least the ones I've seen.