While this movie is not the most entertaining in the world, I think it is better than most over all. I mean it had it's little laughs and just all around a good feeling. It's not too often we get to see two old geezers just having fun with their age and honestly having a good time with the jokes. Walter and Jack had such a great chemistry together as friends/brother in-laws. Just watching them romancing these women was fun and you rooted for them all the way because wither we have to admit it or not, for their age, they still had game! :D I loved just the whole plot of being able to move on and having fun no matter how old you are. I'd recommend this movie for a nice laugh if you want one.

7/10

A bit of the plot from Moon Over Miami and even more from The Monte Carlo Story has Walter Matthau as a degenerate footloose gambler getting a bit long in the tooth persuading an equally aged, but more square Jack Lemmon to take a cruise and try and fleece the old ladies in Out To Sea.

Matthau needs Lemmon because Lemmon can cut it on a dance floor and he's signed them on as dancers for the unescorted women on the cruise. Of course Lemmon doesn't know that. What he does know that Matthau who is the brother of his late wife has come to him with one scheme after another for years. And Matthau owes some big money to the bookies and that's why he needs cash.

So they go on the cruise and as for Matthau he gets involved with Dyan Cannon and her mother Elaine Stritch and its poker not the dance floor where he meets them. Matthau has to deal with a pompous Englishman in Edward Mulhare who really is a sitting target for Matthau's cons.

As for Lemmon he gets involved with Gloria DeHaven who is accompanying her daughter and husband on a holiday. They don't think she gets out enough. Oddly enough that's how Matthau feels about Lemmon.

As for the rest of the cast, Star Trek's Data Brent Spiner has a great part as an obnoxious twit of a performer and dancer who lords it over the others of greater talent who also include Hal Linden and Donald O'Connor. Matthau bounces some great lines off him and Spiner's reactions are priceless. I'd also have to single out Elaine Stritch who comes into her own explaining the facts of life to Cannon.

During the Nineties we were fortunate indeed to have Lemmon and Matthau in some great films, specifically written for them. In Out To Sea you can see that a great supporting cast was assembled for them. Like some of the comedy teams, these two comic actors did variations on their first film together The Fortune Cookie where Matthau is the con artist who is always dragging Lemmon into one of his schemes.

Out To Sea isn't as good as The Fortune Cookie or the first The Odd Couple, but it's still plenty funny.

And Elaine Stritch, too!

Yep, the Grumpy Old Gams of Broadway (who would show them off just a few years later wearing a men's white shirt and a pair of black tights in her Broadway one woman show) plays a featured role in this Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau comedy. Having been through fortune cookies and odd couples, these buddy buddies were the geriatric version of Hope and Crosby, and their road to the fountain of youth always hit a dead end. But the audience always had a good time with the majority of their teamings where even if the story was a stinker, their chemistry was undeniable. In this one, they are working aboard a cruise ship as rather clumsy dance hosts, and along side Stritch, are joined by veterans of stage, screen and TV dating back to the 1930's.

Who says that Hollywood doesn't cater to older actors still wanting to work and give them nice juicy parts? There's the endlessly young Dyan Cannon (as Stritch's daughter),the sweet Gloria DeHaven, the flirty Estelle Harris, the uppity Brent Spiner, the dashing Hal Linden and the toe-tapping Donald O'Connor. You get to know everything you need to know by Spiner's pretentious introduction offstage on microphone of himself, and he's one of those snooty phony charmers who is easy to love to hate from the moment you see him. Then there's "Golden Girl" Rue McClahahan as the ship's owner, a vibrant widow a la Blanche Devereaux, getting the perfect opportunity to take down Spiner at the perfect time.

"I need a crap and a nap, and I don't need an audience!", Stritch declares in her first scene, while Harris coos, "Do I need a number, or do I serve myself?" before breaking into a Helen Kane/Mae Questel Betty Boob voiced song. Romance develops between the lively Cannon and the gambling addicted Matthau, as well as sensitive widow DeHaven and the reluctant dance host Lemmon, basically fooled by Matthau into joining him on the cruise. It turns out that Cannon and her mother are con-artists, and this gets Lemmon and Matthau into all sorts of trouble.

Each of these stars gets an opportunity to steal a scene or two with Stritch and O'Connor's sudden dance a gem of classic comedy, and the sadness within DeHaven quite poignant. It's perhaps not the strongest of comic plotlines, but there are plenty of amusing moments to entertain lovers of comedy of all ages.