`ODD COUPLE' SEQUEL TOOK ITS TIME.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Daily News Film Writer

Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon have wanted to make another ``Odd Couple'' movie for a long time now. But they couldn't do it without playwright Neil Simon, and a sequel to the 1968 film wasn't exactly high on Simon's priority list.

Then, one day, Matthau ran into Simon while having lunch at his tennis club.

``I asked him, `Where's our ``Odd Couple'' sequel?'' Matthau remembers. ``And he said, `You know what? I've been thinking about it, and I have an idea. What do you think about Oscar's son marrying Felix's daughter?' ''

That was eight years ago. Simon wrote 38 pages updating the adventures of Felix and Oscar, just to see if he could do it. Then he put his work in a drawer and forgot about it.

After Lemmon and Matthau paired successfully for the Warner Bros. ``Grumpy Old Men'' movies, Paramount Pictures head Sherry Lansing called Simon and asked about those 38 pages. The two actors were available because a third ``Grumpy Old Men'' movie had sputtered because of script problems. Lansing liked Simon's early ideas and wanted to know how the story ended.

``I had to tell her I had no idea what happened next,'' Simon says. ``I never know what's going to happen on the next page. With the good ones, though, it always works out.''

Hello, again

And that's how ``Neil Simon's The Odd Couple II'' came to be. The actors are 30 years older, and so are the characters in the film. Unkempt Oscar (Matthau) has moved to Florida, where he covers minor-league baseball and maintains his weekly poker game (without Murray the cop - and with a cadre of widows). Felix is still neat as a pin and annoying as hell, having gone through three contentious marriages and continuing sinus difficulties.

The two polar opposites reunite in a California airport to take a road trip to their children's wedding. Naturally, they run into many complications - and confrontations - along the way.

``It was fun to catch up with these characters again and put them in some new surroundings,'' Simon says. ``They're a couple of New Yorkers who find themselves in California, totally lost because they can't remember the name of the town where the wedding is. In New York, of course, they're used to 61st Street coming after 60th Street. Here, everything is `San' something or other.''

``There's a universality about these characters that audiences just keep responding to,'' Simon continues. ``They love watching these two people trying to live together and cope with each other.''

They love the script

The actors have nothing but raves for Simon's sequel, Lemmon going so far as calling it the second greatest comic screenplay he has ever read. (He put ``Some Like It Hot'' first.)

``It's funnier and more touching than the first, and how often can you say that about a sequel?'' Lemmon, 73, says. ``There aren't a whole lot of `Godfather IIs' out there.''

Matthau also played Oscar on Broadway, likening those days to ``prehistoric times.'' But he had no problem playing the character again.

``This movie is better than the play, and when I got the script for that play, I told my wife, `This is going to run for 10 years,' '' says the 77-year-old Matthau. ``In fact, the only time I have ever invested money in something was when I put $10,000 into that play. They had to let me invest or I wouldn't do the part. And I made $80,000 off that investment.''

He and Lemmon have also done pretty well financially from their teamings in recent years. Lemmon says they're like an old married couple after 10 movies together, able to finish each other's sentences and anticipate nearly every acting move.

``We blend well together, kind of like Abbott and Costello or Laurel and Hardy,'' Matthau says.

Adds Lemmon: ``We definitely have chemistry. We're on the same wavelength. There's nothing to it when I'm acting with Walter. It's like I'm sitting down and visiting with an old friend. We don't rehearse much. We just learn our lines and run with them.''

`Grumpy' return?

And they'll probably running some lines together again before too long. Warner Bros. is still trying to put together a good script for another ``Grumpy Old Men'' movie, and Lemmon says there are plans in the works for a third ``Odd Couple'' installment.

``When we work together, there is complete joy and happiness and love and prosperity,'' Matthau says, his eyes twinkling. ``I don't work without him, and he doesn't work without me.''

Matthau pauses and then adds (with perfect timing): ``Well, he does, but he does lousy stuff. We make a lot more money when we work together.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Walter Matthau, left, and Jack Lemmon are back as Oscar and Felix, 30 years later, in ``Neil Simon's The ``Odd Couple II.''