''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 Character (arts), charac ...
black comedy
Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally ...
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
MTV Entertainment Studios (formerly MTV Production Development from 2003 until 2018 and MTV Studios from 2018 until 2021) is an American film and television Film production, production and Film distribution, distribution company and is the film ...
production. It was also the first film
Blue Sky Studios
Blue Sky Studios, Inc. was an American visual effects and computer animation animation studio, studio, which was active from 1987 to 2021. It was based in Greenwich, Connecticut, and was founded on February 22, 1987, by Chris Wedge, Michael F ...
was involved in. It is also the only MTV Films production that does not feature the involvement of
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the flagship namesake subsidiary of Paramount ...
.
The main focus of the story is the fact that, unbeknownst to many humans,
cockroach
Cockroaches (or roaches) are insects belonging to the Order (biology), order Blattodea (Blattaria). About 30 cockroach species out of 4,600 are associated with human habitats. Some species are well-known Pest (organism), pests.
Modern cockro ...
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 (sometimes called community-access television) is traditionally a form of non-commercial mass media where the general public can create content television programming which is Narrowcasting, narrowcast through cable tele ...
cable TV
Cable television is a system of delivering television broadcast programming, programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This ...
channel. Actors providing the roaches' voices included
Billy West
William Richard Werstine (born 1952), known professionally as Billy West, is an American voice actor, comedian, radio personality, impressionist and musician. His voice roles include Bugs Bunny in the 1996 film ''Space Jam'', the title characte ...
(in his feature film debut),
Jim Turner,
Rick Aviles (in his final film role before his death),
Tim Blake Nelson
Timothy Blake Nelson (born May 11, 1964) is an American actor, writer, and director. Described as a "modern character actor", his roles include Delmar O'Donnell in ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' (2000), Gideon in ''Minority Report (film), Minori ...
,
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 Crit ...
, and
Dave Chappelle
David Khari Webber Chappelle ( ; born August 24, 1973) is an American stand-up comedy, stand-up comedian and actor. He starred in and co-created the satirical comedy sketch series ''Chappelle's Show'' (2003–2006) before quitting in the middle ...
. The film received generally negative reviews from critics and was a
box-office bomb
A box-office bomb is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the combined production budget, marketing, and distribution costs exceed the revenue after release has te ...
, nearly grossing over $4 million against a budget of $13 million.
Plot
Penniless and straight out of the
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa (U of I, UIowa, or Iowa) is a public university, 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 int ...
, 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
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
; Cockroach voices
Production
John Payson originally created the
short film
A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film o ...
''Joe's Apt.'' in 1992, which aired on
MTV
MTV (an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable television television channel, channel and the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group sub-division of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Launched on ...
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.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...
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 animation, adult animated Animated sitcom, sitcom created by Mike Judge. The series follows Beavis and Butt-Head, both voiced by Judge, a pair of teenage slackers characterized by their apathy, Stupi ...
'' was also put into development.
''Joe's Apartment'' was the first feature film
Blue Sky Studios
Blue Sky Studios, Inc. was an American visual effects and computer animation animation studio, studio, which was active from 1987 to 2021. It was based in Greenwich, Connecticut, and was founded on February 22, 1987, by Chris Wedge, Michael F ...
was involved in, having previously produced company logos and animated commercials.
Under
Chris Wedge
John Christian Wedge (born March 20, 1957) is an American filmmaker, animator, and voice actor. He is best known for being the lead animator of the sci-fi action film ''Tron'' (1982), co-founding the now defunct animation studio Blue Sky Studios ...
's supervision, Blue Sky produced animated sequences of the cockroaches.
The film also blended them with scenes of puppetry, real cockroaches, and
stop-motion
Stop-motion (also known as stop frame animation) is an animation, animated filmmaking and special effects technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appe ...
animation (including the TV roach porn).
Executives at
20th Century Fox
20th Century Studios, Inc., formerly 20th Century Fox, is an American film studio, film production and Film distributor, distribution company owned by the Walt Disney Studios (division), Walt Disney Studios, the film studios division of the ...
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
Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
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
A television show, TV program (), or simply a TV show, is the general reference to any content produced for viewing on a television set that is broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, and cable, or distributed digitally on streaming platf ...
, Ebert's colleague Gene Siskel
Eugene Kal Siskel (January 26, 1946 – February 20, 1999) was an American film critic and journalist for the ''Chicago Tribune'' who co-hosted a movie review television series alongside colleague Roger Ebert.
Siskel started writing for the '' ...
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
CinemaScore is an American 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 from the data.
Background
Ed Mintz, who ...
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 and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...
website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, 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 ...
, 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
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