You may not want to buy after seeing dark ‘Duplex’

In theaters

DUPLEX, directed by Danny DeVito, written by Larry Doyle and John Hamburg, 88 minutes, rated PG-13.

Danny DeVito’s “Duplex,” the dark new comedy about how buying a house can destroy your life, opened nationally opposite “Under the Tuscan Sun,” the bright new romantic comedy about how buying a house can restore your life, every facet of it, with hope, love and plenty of good sex.

Depending on your mood – and your experiences in buying real estate – you have a choice: the domestic horrors of “Duplex” or the hard-won domestic bliss of “Under the Tuscan Sun.” Given the tight housing market, in which prices have unreasonably skyrocketed, it seems only right to begin with the horror. On Friday, we’ll plunge into the bliss.

Based on a screenplay by Larry Doyle and John Hamburg, “Duplex” stars Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore as Alex and Nancy, a young Manhattan couple longing for roomier quarters but unable to afford them without first moving out of the city and into a more reasonably priced borough. With the help of their real estate agent, Kenneth (Harvey Fierstein), they find exactly what they’re seeking in Brooklyn, a gorgeous duplex that seems almost too perfect – three fireplaces, original woodwork, period stained glass, rooms the size of small cathedrals, and charm, charm, charm.

Living in the upstairs apartment is the widow Mrs. Connelly (Eileen Essell), a sweet, elderly woman with a nasty cough who legally can’t be removed from her rent-controlled abode unless, of course, she agrees to move or, in fact, dies. Still, to Alex and Nancy, that cough of hers is especially promising, as is Mrs. Connelly’s advanced age, which teeters somewhere near an obituary-friendly 105.

With the odds stacked in their favor that Mrs. Connelly has knitted her last shawl, Alex and Nancy buy the property, hedging their bets that they’ll soon have the entire duplex to themselves. But when they move in, Mrs. Connelly actually proves rather spry, just healthy enough to become the tenant from hell, so demanding in her requests for assistance and so impossible in her nighttime antics, that Alex can’t finish his second novel, Nancy gets fired from her magazine job, and both are driven mad to the point of considering murder.

DeVito’s directing career has been a string of outrageous black comedies – “The War of the Roses,” “Throw Momma From the Train” and “Death to Smoochy” chief among them. He has the sort of twisted sense of humor that touches a nerve we’d probably rather not recognize as our own, but which DeVito nevertheless asserts is human. In this case, he takes a typical urban couple, both professionals driven to conquer life’s upward climb, and throws a little old woman in the path to achieving their dreams.

What springs from this may not develop into DeVito’s best movie, but it does have its moments, a controlled farce that finds Stiller, Barrymore and Essell mining several big laughs while DeVito, the cynic, complicates matters – and deepens the dysfunction – with a final surprise twist.

Grade: B

On video and DVD

2 FAST 2 FURIOUS, directed by John Singleton, written by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, 94 minutes, rated PG-13.

John Singleton’s street-racing movie, “2 Fast 2 Furious,” a sequel to the surprise 2001 hit, “The Fast and the Furious,” offers audiences solid answers to that age-old question: Exactly how does one become too fast and too furious?

Apparently, doing so involves more than just having the right muscle car or, for that matter, the right muscles. There’s a dress code involved: Miami-tramp contemporary seems to work best for the ladies as does cabana-boy casual for the men.

Regardless of gender, hair should be tipped, teased and tousled, as if you just hopped out of bed – preferably somebody else’s. Tattoos and implants are encouraged, as are piercings, but nothing is ever as important as having the proper orthodontia. Indeed, to be truly too fast and too furious, this movie suggests that one must have the sort of pearly whites that sparkle handsomely against one’s sun-kissed skin.

As directed by Singleton from a script by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, “2 Fast 2 Furious” unfortunately deserves a dressing down. It’s too much of a dim bulb to live up to its title, too long-winded to be considered quick, let alone fast.

Initially, it seems as if it’s going to continue the fun, cartoonish ride offered in the first movie, but it doesn’t go the distance. By its midpoint, it gets bogged down in a silly drug cartel plotline involving Paul Walker, Tyrese, Eva Mendes and Cole Hauser that’s taken so seriously, the film loses the giddy spunk that made its predecessor so enjoyably dumb and over the top.

The problem with the movie isn’t just that the series is no longer running on Vin Diesel, which actually turns out to be a strike against it, but that it’s well-intentioned – it wants to be about something, which is sweet, but a shame.

The first film never wanted to be anything more than just a throwback to the hot-rod films of the 1950s; its kitschy embrace of a forgotten subculture was part of its charm. Worse for “2 Furious,” there’s nothing about it that sets it apart from the pack. It’s just sort of there, revving its engines and racing around street corners with no place to go.

Grade: C-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.