Customer Reviews

Joe's Apartment

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Anyone who disses this movie is incapable of understanding slapstick taken to the max. Even before seeing this DVD, I was laughing at the photo on the box...just the thought of making a roach movie is funny! GOOD slapstick IS ridiculous, but also FUNNY!

If you are squeamish, then forget this film. The roaches are realistic & well animated..then again, the hilarious roach dialogue almost makes them likeable! This film is truly the "king" of critter comedies..move over Babe, Air Bud,and Benji......Rodney Roach & friends have come to infest your space!

While the script may be a little anemic, frequent roach appearances and musical numbers keep it moving along nicely. However, there are some funny moments where our nice guy human subject just can't get a break!

There is absolutely no other film quite like "Joes Apartment"...I congratulate MTV and Geffen Pictures for having the "cojones" to commit to such a project. This film deserved a much bigger audience at the theatre, but hey, you can have these roaches IN YOUR HOUSE for very little money..It's a riot!

While not deathless art, this IS a fabulous, one-of-a-kind, superlatively silly flick. Joe is a superbly naive and earnest corn-fed Iowa hunk with absolutely no clue of personal hygiene. When he moves into a roach-infested New York apartment (is that redundant?), his fellow tenants - the roaches - are overjoyed.

The acting/direction is excellent, and the whimsical music is extremely enjoyable. Of course, if you have an insect phobia, the screens full of roaches, dancing and otherwise, just may make your skin crawl! It did mine! But this is still a very funny and well-made wacky little film.

This is my favorite movie of all time! It's humorous look at New York city is hilarious. The animated cockroaches are fun to watch singing and dancing! (Funky towel!) And, of coarse, Jerry O'Connell, whom is my favorite. MTV did great making it's first movie here. My only complaint was that there was no sountrack made! ???? Watch it!!!! Ralph and Rodney will thank you.

MTV was very clever to think up a movie that contains quite a few musical numbers performed by cockroaches! I think the movie was funny, stupid, and a little bit romantic. This is the best combination for a movie. I thoroughly enjoyed viewing this movie.

Sometimes less is more. The original "Joe's Apartment" 15 minute short (by the same filmmaker who did this version) was very engaging in a weird way. In that version, Joe has already befriended the roaches, and the short film is entirely about Joe's date (in which the cockroaches ultimately spill onto the woman). Most of the short version is actually reprised in this longer version. But the extensions here are hugely disappointing, and take away from the feel of the original film. There's now a huge focus on the violence in New York City; somehow we're supposed to find most if not all the violence to be "funny" (violence is not funny, IMO). Joe is shown here to be a slob who embraces filth, while that was not (from what I recall) part of the original - there he was just a normal guy who had somehow befriended the roaches. In this version Joe tries to kill the roaches and vice-versa, while that was not the "feel" of the original. And this version adds a silly plot about a land developer, although the way the roaches deal with "developing" the land themselves (not to give anything away) is cleverly done.

All in all, at this price there are some moments, but overall the fun/friendly feel of the original is somewhat ruined. And it's too bad they didn't include the original short film on this DVD, there certainly was room for it. Possibly they didn't include it since much of the original short was reproduced in the long version, but it's also possible that if they included the original, people would notice that the long version doesn't compare favorably. I give the original short at least 4 and more likely 5 stars (for what it was: a very clever, short film), but with these extensions I give the long version only two stars. In this case, less most definitely was more.

I agree with Alex Meyer's earlier review that there is no other movie quite like "Joe's Apartment." The roaches sing and dance, and engage in dialogue with Joe. In fact, the most important roach characters, the ones with the biggest speaking parts, and so on, get mentioned in the credits. I don't know of another film where an insect gets an actual film credit. :-)

So if you're squeamish about cockroaches, this movie isn't for you, as they're quite realistically done, there are literally thousands of them scurrying around a lot of the time (can you spell Raid?), and they're really the stars of the whole movie. The fun-loving roaches that infest Joe's New York apartment are the biggest (or littlest) party animals in the Big Apple, and their musical numbers and speaking parts and antics are a major part of the movie. The more "advanced" humans definitely take a back seat. :-) The roach animation is very convincing.

I note Robert Vaughn has a little role and it's good to see he's still working. I remember him from a one-man stage performance he did a couple of decades ago where he played Abraham Lincoln for which he received some well-deserved accolades. And Don Ho, of "Little Bubbles" song fame, plays the local gangster. I almost didn't recognize Don as it had probably been 20 years since I'd seen him on screen. Jerry O'Connell as Joe and Megan Ward as the beautiful girl he carries the torch for are perfect choices for their parts, and both turn in fine performances. All in all a fun movie with a possibly unique concept. My hat's off to Geffen for taking a chance with what was probably a very risky movie.

You don't have to be a teenage boy to love this thing.
My wife and I just watched it on cable and she insists
that I get the DVD. We're both 64 and anything but gross.

Maybe I'm pushing it a bit here giving the film five stars... However, Joe's Apartment is one of the few low-key camp-films that came out in the mid-nineties (Mortal Kombat being another example) before Hollywood went overboard with the CGI and it definitely should only be viewed alone or with a younger sibling due to the overall tackiness. What I really find great about this flick is that instead of fully focusing on "MTV-esque" anarchy more attention was devoted towards hyperactive pacing. Such as the way that the film took the horrors of living in low-rent apartments and twisted it to be conveyed with a cartoon like lunacy. As far as the toilet humor goes, it's hardly as extreme as it is in teen films as cockroaches mainly provide the main gross out moments.
My only complaint was the minor use of the sacred f word which is probably the contributing factor why this film was given a higher censor rating and wasn't as big as totally pathetic blockbuster hits such as Kangaroo Jack *shudder*... However, I'm glad it isn't very well known, as I feel it's like a secret guilty pleasure where you can just sit there and let yourself go and laugh insanely at juvenile slapstick for a while.
Some people felt that the musical numbers from the cockroaches were carried on too many times. Personally, I feel they're just great to watch, pleasing to the eye and the ear and twice as wacky.
Who knows? Maybe this film might achieve a high cult status in years to come?

While many people in my life have just stared at this movie in horror, most eventually agree (however reluctantly) that it is divinely hilarious. The plot isn't brilliant, the dialogue isn't brilliant, but it's so strange and unique that it captures something truly funny and truly wonderful. I've nearly killed my copy through watching it so frequently. Jerry O'Connell is a great choice and pulls off a great performance for working with roaches, both real and computer-generated. And the music... Nothing can describe the music. Everyone should see this movie at least once.

Great effectsdown to the opening strains of Mel Torme turning into the cockroach (that a lot of critics thought he was :> ) Inventive yet so overly silly one isn't sure if the nausea comes from the bugs or the sappy script...still all in all a cute film with some really cute bugs