Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Is this a great film? No. But it's a fun film, particularly for those of us old enough to remember the hey day of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau -- a match made in heaven, if ever there was one.As with his character here, Lemmon really was 71 when this was shot; Matthau was only 59, but looked much older. Each only lived 3 or 4 years after this film, but they did make a sequel to "The Odd Couple" after this. So, while it's not a great film, it is great to see these two real-life pals together again on screen.The plot is simple: Matthau (a gambler) ropes Lemmon (a retired store clerk) into going on a cruise, and Lemmon doesn't realize that it's not as passengers, but as professional dance partners. Matthau hopes to hook up with a rich widow (at which he fails...sort of...Dyan Cannon), and Matthau just wants out, but falls in love with Gloria deHaven. Along the way there are some funny hijinks, but only the ending is disappointing...way too impractical.Along for the cruise as other dance hosts are Hal Linden and Donald O'Connor, who, frankly, get too little screen time. Brent Spiner is good as the overbearing cruise director. Elaine Stritch is fun as Cannon's mother. Edward Mulhare, who died shortly after making the film, plays another cruise ship passenger. And Rue McClanahan plays the owner of ship. It's a fun group of seniors.This probably won't tickle many of the younger crowd, but I think it's fun. Just not GREAT fun.

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.

i just happened to be channel surfing and this movie was on HBO one afternoon.I started to watch it and for whatever reason i continued to watch it and was glad i did.like another poster said this movie was truly funny and recalled the way Hollywood can make a truly entertaining movie,, even if the the so called critics do not agree.one of my favorite parts among many was the closing credits with the edited bloopers and the dancing done by the stars as the credits rolled. to bad these two great actors are not with us anymore to possibly give us more of this quality humor in our movies.

I never heard of this film when it first came out. It must have sunk immediately. :o) I saw it on cable while sick in hospital so I hardly had enough energy to watch it, let alone turn the channel. Better choice than the Style Channel. ;0(. Filmed on location, this travelogue should have been on the Travel Channel. The plot is recycled from ship board farces of the thirties and forties. The cast seems to have been recycled from the fifties. Donald O'Connor, star of musicals and Edward Mulhare as a card shark. As to the main cast, Walter Matthau is still playing the same part as he did in Guys and Dolls or was it the one about the orphan girl? Wiseacre irresponsible gambler and rounder. But it just doesn't take with a man of his age. As to Jack Lemmon, he plays his part so straight, he can hardly dip and glide when dancing. And as mentioned, Dyan Cannon is outstandingly attractive as another swindler sailing with her mother who thinks Walter is rich, while he thinks she is rich. Elaine Stritch plays Dyan's mother, another retread from the fifties. The most fun is the running feud between Brent Spiner as the domineering and snotty cruise director who immediately spots Walter as a poor dancer, and spends his time trying to get him dismissed so he will have to pay for his free passage. In the end, though he receives his comeuppances. Meanwhile Jack mopes about, meets an attractive woman, with mutual attraction, but their affair is broken up by Walter's lies that Jack is a doctor, when he was actually a retired department store buyer. But finally, the two men take to the sea in a rubber boat to intercept her seaplane and all is well. There does not seem to be any principal player under the age of fifty.