Alex and Nancy have the picture perfect life. They are newlyweds with up and coming jobs that are looking for a home to start their own family. Alex who is a writer and is about to publish his second book wants his own space where he can write in peace while his wife Nancy goes off to work doing magazine layout for a prominent New York magazine. Through the help of their broker they stumble on what appears to be the perfect home a Duplex in Brooklyn, but there is only one problem and that is what appears to be a sweet little old lady who lives upstairs of the Duplex. Rent control won’t allow them to kick her out but the place is too perfect to pass up. So they purchase the pricey Duplex in hopes the old lady will not be any trouble or will pass away soon enough. But what at first seems to be paradise quickly turns into hell, as it seems that the little old lady is not as sweet as they thought she was. She has Alex running errands for her all day and he can’t manage to finish his book, which is quickly coming under deadline. But more than that she is slowly ruining both their lives as she plays her TV loud late at night and neither of them are getting any sleep and are slowly becoming frazzled. When Nancy loses her job because of the interference of the old lady she might have gone too far. As now both Alex and Nancy are contemplating having her whacked but a nosy police officer and their own moralities are getting in the way for now at least.

The movie contained quite a bit of the comedy I really don’t like, gross out humor, but despite this the movie was still very funny and I found myself laughing very hard at some of the more ludicrous scenes in the movie. Yes, at times I found myself grimacing at its worse moments and even closed my eyes during one scene as not to be assaulted by the gross out, low brow type of humor but in the end I still found the movie very funny and just wished they could have cut two or three scenes as they were not necessary other than to offend some audiences and to attract the adolescent crowd that seems to feed on such humor. What makes the movie is its premise and how well they pulled it out, as you cannot help but laugh at this crafty, mean, old lady totally destroying the life of two people so thoroughly. Ben Stiller did what he does best and that is to play the somewhat delusional good type hero that is so easily bilked and that everything that can go wrong against can and does. I am not sure if the movie was trying to throw you a twist at the end or it was just part of the plot as you could see the ending 10 minutes into the film, either way it worked out perfectly. The movie is a humorful, good time comedy that goes over board unnecessarily at times
3.5 stars out of 5