''Joe's Apartment'' is a 1996 American

musical Musical is the adjective of music. Musical may also refer to: * Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance * Musical film Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the characters are interwo ...

black comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the old ...

written and directed by John Payson (in his feature directorial debut), based on his 1992 short film of the same name, and starring

Jerry O'Connell Jerry O'Connell (born February 17, 1974) is an American actor and television host. He is known for his roles as Quinn Mallory in the television series ''Sliders'', Andrew Clements in ''My Secret Identity'', Vern Tessio in the film '' Stand by M ...

and

Megan Ward Megan Marie Ward (born September 24, 1969) is an American actress. She is best known for her numerous credits in science fiction and horror movies and television series. In 2007, she joined the cast of the American daytime drama ''General Hospi ...

. The first

MTV Films MTV Entertainment Studios is the film and television production arm of MTV Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Founded in 1991 as MTV Productions, it is a consolidation of the former MTV ...

production, it was the only one not to involve

Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...

(the 2019 film '' Eli'', which was distributed by

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...

, still had the involvement of Paramount). The main focus of the story is the fact that, unbeknownst to many humans,

cockroach Cockroaches (or roaches) are a paraphyletic group of insects belonging to Blattodea, containing all members of the group except termites. About 30 cockroach species out of 4,600 are associated with human habitats. Some species are well-known ...

es can talk, but prefer not to, as humans "smush first and ask questions later". They also sing and even have their own

public-access television Public-access television is traditionally a form of non-commercial mass media where the general public can create content television programming which is narrowcast through cable television specialty channels. Public-access television was creat ...

cable TV Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...

channel. Actors providing the roaches' voices included

Billy West William Richard Werstine (born April 16, 1952), known professionally as Billy West, is an American voice actor. His voice roles include Bugs Bunny in the 1996 film ''Space Jam'' and several subsequent projects, the title characters of ''Doug'' ...

(in his feature film debut), Jim Turner,

Rick Aviles Rick Aviles (October 14, 1952 – March 17, 1995) was an American stand-up comedian and actor of Puerto Rican descent, best remembered for portraying the villainous Willie Lopez in the film ''Ghost''. Career Born in Manhattan, Aviles worked as ...

(in his final film role before his death),

Tim Blake Nelson Timothy Blake Nelson (born May 11, 1964) is an American actor and playwright. Described as a "modern character actor", his roles include Delmar O'Donnell in '' O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' (2000), Gideon in '' Minority Report'' (2002), Dr. Pend ...

BD Wong Bradley Darryl Wong (born October 24, 1960) is an American actor. Wong won a Tony Award for his performance as Song Liling in ''M. Butterfly'', becoming the only actor in Broadway history to receive the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critic ...

, and

Dave Chappelle David Khari Webber Chappelle ( ; born August 24, 1973) is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He is best known for his satirical comedy sketch series ''Chappelle's Show'' (2003–2006), which he starred in until quitting in the middle of p ...

. The film received generally negative reviews from critics and was a box office failure.

Plot

Penniless and straight out of the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 co ...

, Joe (

) moves to New York needing an apartment and a job. With the fortuitous death of Mrs. Grotowski, an artist named Walter Shit ( Jim Turner) helps Joe to take over the last

rent controlled Rent regulation is a system of laws, administered by a court or a public authority, which aims to ensure the affordability of housing and tenancies on the rental market for dwellings. Generally, a system of rent regulation involves: *Price cont ...

apartment in a building slated for demolition by convincing everyone that Mrs. Grotowski was Joe's mother. If Senator Dougherty (

Robert Vaughn Robert Francis Vaughn (November 22, 1932 – November 11, 2016) was an American actor noted for his stage, film and television work. His television roles include the spy Napoleon Solo in the 1960s series '' The Man from U.N.C.L.E.''; th ...

) can empty the building, he can make way for the prison he intends to build there, and uses thug Alberto Bianco (

Don Ho Donald Tai Loy Ho (August 13, 1930 – April 14, 2007) was a Hawaiian traditional pop musician, singer and entertainer. He is best known for the song "Tiny Bubbles" from the album of the same name. Life and career Ho was a singer of Native ...

) and his nephews, Vlad (Shiek Mahmud-Bey) and Jesus (Jim Sterling), to intimidate tenants. Joe discovers he has twenty to thirty thousand roommates, all of them talking, singing cockroaches grateful that a slob has moved in. Led by Ralph (

), the sentient, tune-savvy insects scare away the thugs in an act of

enlightened self-interest Enlightened self-interest is a philosophy in ethics which states that persons who act to further the interests of others (or the interests of the group or groups to which they belong), ultimately serve their own self-interest. It has often been ...

that endears them to their human meal ticket. Tired of living on handouts from mom back in Iowa and after a series of dead-end jobs ruined by his well-intentioned six-legged roomies, Joe finds himself the unskilled drummer in Walter Shit's band. Hanging posters for SHIT, he encounters Senator Dougherty's daughter Lily (

) promoting her own project, a community garden to occupy the vacant site surrounding Joe's building. A gift to Lily while working on her garden is enough to woo her back to Joe's apartment. However, the cockroaches break a promise to keep out of his business and a panicked Lily flees, only to discover the garden she'd worked on has been burned to the ground. During a fight with his roommates over his spoiled romantic evening, the building suffers the same fate as the garden. A mutual truce between the hapless and now homeless roommates leads the cockroaches to "call in favors from every roach, rat and pigeon in New York City" to try to make amends to Joe. Overnight, the roaches scour New York to gather materials to convert the entire area into a garden and take care of all the necessary paperwork to ensure harmony reigns over all.

Cast

as Joe (AKA Joe F. Grotowski) *

as Lily Dougherty * Jim Turner as Walter Shit *

Sandra Denton Sandra Jacqueline Denton (born 9 November 1964 or 1969), better known by her stage name Pepa or Pep, is a Jamaican-American rapper, best known for her work as a member of the female rap trio Salt-N-Pepa. Denton starred in ''The Salt-N-Pepa Show' ...

as Blank *

as Senator Dougherty *

as Alberto Bianco * Jim Sterling as Jesus Bianco * Shiek Mahmud-Bey as Vladimir Bianco *

David Huddleston David William Huddleston (September 17, 1930 – August 2, 2016) was an American actor. An Emmy Award nominee, Huddleston had a prolific television career, and appeared in many films including:'' Rio Lobo'', ''Blazing Saddles'', '' Crime Buste ...

as P.I. Smith *

Vincent Pastore Vincent Pastore (; born July 14, 1946) is an American actor. Often cast as a mafioso, he is best known for his portrayal of Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero on the HBO series ''The Sopranos''. Early life Pastore was born to an Italian-Ameri ...

as Apartment broker *

Paul Bartel Paul Bartel (August 6, 1938 – May 13, 2000) was an American actor, writer and director. He was perhaps most known for his 1982 hit black comedy '' Eating Raoul'', which he wrote, starred in and directed. Bartel appeared in over 90 movies and ...

as NEA scout * Richard "Moby" Hall as Club DJ * Graham Dewar as Pizza delivery guy *

Nick Zedd Nick may refer to: * Nick (given name) * A cricket term for a slight deviation of the ball off the edge of the bat * British slang for being arrested * British slang for a police station * British slang for stealing * Short for nickname Place ...

as customer * Solange Monnier as customer ; Cockroach voices *

Rockapella Rockapella is an American a cappella musical group formed in 1986 in New York City. The group's name is an amalgam of "rock" and "a cappella". Rockapella sings original vocal music and a cappella covers of pop and rock songs; and over time, their ...

as The Roach Chorus *

as Ralph *

Reginald Hudlin Reginald Alan Hudlin (born December 15, 1961) is an American film screenwriter, director, producer, and comic-book writer. Along with his older brother Warrington Hudlin, he is known as one of the Hudlin Brothers. From 2005 to 2008, Hudlin was ...

as Rodney * Jim Turner *

* Jim Sterling *

Godfrey Godfrey may refer to: People * Godfrey (name), a given name and surname * Godfrey (comedian), American comedian, actor Places In the United States * Godfrey, Georgia, an unincorporated community * Godfrey, Illinois, a village * Godfrey, Kansas, an ...

Corey Burton Corey Gregg Weinberg (born August 3, 1955), known professionally as Corey Burton, is an American voice actor. He is the current voice of Captain Hook, Ludwig Von Drake, Dale and others for The Walt Disney Company, Shockwave on '' The Transformer ...

Bam Bam Bigelow Scott Charles Bigelow (September 1, 1961 – January 19, 2007) was an American professional wrestler, better known by the ring name Bam Bam Bigelow. Recognizable by his close to 400-pound frame and the distinctive flame tattoo that spanned most ...

Production

John Payson originally created the

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

''Joe's Apt.'' in 1992, which aired on

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

as filler in-between commercial breaks. Payson said he was inspired by a 1987 short film called ''Those Damn Roaches'' and the 1987 Japanese film ''

Twilight of the Cockroaches is a 1987 anime/live-action film written and directed by Hiroaki Yoshida that combines live-action footage with animation. The plot concerns a society of cockroaches who live peacefully in the apartment of a bachelor named Saito, until a woman mo ...

'', the latter crossing hand-drawn animation and live action. After the short received a

CableACE Award The CableACE Award (earlier known as the ACE Awards; ACE was an acronym for "Award for Cable Excellence") is a defunct award that was given by what was then the National Cable Television Association from 1978 to 1997 to honor excellence in Am ...

, MTV executives were impressed enough to discuss producing a feature adaptation with Payson. In 1993, MTV made a deal with Geffen Pictures during development to produce films based on the network's properties and release them through Warner Bros. While ''Joe's Apartment'' was put into production with a $13 million budget, a feature film adaptation of ''

Beavis and Butt-Head ''Beavis and Butt-Head'' is an American adult animated series created by Mike Judge. The series follows Beavis and Butt-Head, both voiced by Judge, a pair of teenage slackers characterized by their apathy, lack of intelligence, lowbrow humor, an ...

'' was also put into development. ''Joe's Apartment'' was the first feature film

Blue Sky Studios Blue Sky Studios, Inc. was an American computer animation studio based in Greenwich, Connecticut. It was founded on February 22, 1987 by Chris Wedge, Michael Ferraro, Carl Ludwig, Alison Brown, David Brown, and Eugene Troubetzkoy after their e ...

was involved in, having produced company logos and animated commercials before. Under

Chris Wedge John Christian Wedge (born March 20, 1957) is an American animator, designer, film director, voice actor, film producer, screenwriter, and cartoonist. He is known for directing the films '' Ice Age'' (2002), ''Robots'' (2005), '' Epic'' (2013), ...

's supervision, Blue Sky produced

computer-animated Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating animations. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both static scenes (still images) and dynamic images (moving images), while computer animation refer ...

sequences of the cockroaches. The film also blended them with scenes of puppetry, real cockroaches, and

stop-motion Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames ...

animation (including the TV roach porn). Executives at

20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Disn ...

were impressed enough with ''Joe's Apartment'' to acquire Blue Sky, and eventually the studio became a feature-animation company.

Reception

Even with the enthusiastic billing as "MTV's first feature movie" and the support of the company, ''Joe's Apartment'' was a box office failure when it opened on July 26, 1996. Opening to 1,512 theaters but earning a dismal $1.8 million, the film closed all screenings in the middle of August and finished with only $4.6 million. Warner sold distribution rights for later MTV Film productions back to MTV's parent company, Viacom, not long after. Reviews were almost universally negative, mostly distaste at the blending of grimy gross-out gags and up-beat musical humor.

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

gave the film one star out of four, stating "''Joe's Apartment'' would be a very bad comedy even without the roaches, but it would not be a disgusting one. No, wait: I take that back. Even without the roaches, we would still have the subplot involving the pink disinfectant urinal cakes." Audiences surveyed by

CinemaScore CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data. Background Ed Mintz founded Ci ...

gave the film a grade of "B+" on a scale of A+ to F. ''Joe's Apartment'' has an approval rating of based on professional reviews on the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, with an average rating of . Its critical consensus reads, "Audiences will want their security deposit back from ''Joe's Apartment'', a lame comedy whose dancing cockroaches are more charming than the human characters."

References

External links

* * * * {{Cockroach 1996 films 1990s musical comedy films American fantasy comedy films American films with live action and animation American musical comedy films American musical fantasy films Films about insects Fictional cockroaches Features based on short films The Geffen Film Company films MTV Films films Warner Bros. films Films set in apartment buildings Films set in New York City Films shot in New York City Films shot in New Jersey Films scored by Carter Burwell Films about real estate holdout Films using stop-motion animation 1996 comedy films 1996 directorial debut films 1990s English-language films 1990s American films