Joe's Apartment

''Joe's Apartment'' is a 1996 American musical black comedy film 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 and Megan Ward. It was the first MTV Films production. It was also the first film Blue Sky Studios was involved in. It is also the only MTV Films production that does not feature the involvement of Paramount Pictures.

The main focus of the story is the fact that, unbeknownst to many humans, cockroaches 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 cable TV channel. Actors providing the roaches' voices included Billy West (in his feature film debut), Jim Turner, Rick Aviles (in his final film role before his death), Tim Blake Nelson, BD Wong, and Dave Chappelle. The film received generally negative reviews from critics and was a box-office bomb, nearly grossing over $4 million against a budget of $13 million.

Plot

Penniless and straight out of the University of Iowa, Joe F. moves to New York needing an apartment and a job. With the fortuitous death of Mrs. Grotowski, an artist named Walter Shit helps Joe to take over the last rent-controlled apartment in a building slated for demolition by convincing everyone that Mrs. Grotowski was Joe's mother. If Senator Dougherty can empty the building, he can make way for the prison he intends to build there, and uses thug Alberto Bianco and his nephews, Vlad and Jesus, to intimidate tenants.

Joe discovers he has twenty to thirty thousand roommates, all of them talking, singing cockroaches who are 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 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

; Cockroach voices

Production

John Payson originally created the short film ''Joe's Apt.'' in 1992, which aired on MTV 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'', the latter crossing hand-drawn animation and live action. After the short received a CableACE Award, 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'' was also put into development.

''Joe's Apartment'' was the first feature film Blue Sky Studios was involved in, having previously produced company logos and animated commercials. Under Chris Wedge's supervision, Blue Sky produced animated sequences of the cockroaches. The film also blended them with scenes of puppetry, real cockroaches, and stop-motion animation (including the TV roach porn). Executives at 20th Century Fox 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 in 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 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." On their television show, Ebert's colleague Gene Siskel said he was bored by the nonstop scenes featuring the roaches, and lamented the underdeveloped relationship between Joe and Lily, quipping, "I wanted that romance to be more than just padding between the ' roach clips,' if you will."

Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore 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 website Rotten Tomatoes, 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

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{{Cockroach

1996 films
1996 black comedy films
1990s musical comedy films
American fantasy comedy films
American films with live action and animation
American musical comedy films
American musical fantasy films
Blue Sky Studios films
Films about 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 directorial debut films
1990s English-language films
1990s American films
English-language black comedy films
English-language musical comedy films
1996 musical films