ODD COUPLE BUOYANT AGAIN IN `OUT TO SEA' : `SEA'S' PEDIGREE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

At least one seagoing movie won't break a studio's budget this summer.

In fact, after watching ``Speed 2'' capsize on launch and its $200 million co-production, ``Titanic,'' sink out of the season altogether, 20th Century Fox's best hope for salvaging any summer business now rests on ``Out to Sea.''

The umpteenth pairing of comedy's Grumpy Old Men, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, the cruise ship-set ``Sea'' was initially considered a nice counter-programming piece for older and more sensitive audiences at the start of an even more action-packed movie summer than usual.

But when it became clear that James Cameron would not have ``Titanic'' - the most expensive Hollywood production of all time - ready for its planned July 2 release, ``Out to Sea'' was repositioned from late May to the lucrative holiday weekend slot.

At ages 76 and 72, respectively, Matthau and Lemmon have little interest in the high stakes release game played with modern movie blockbusters. But with nearly a century's worth of show business success and experience between them, Hollywood's favorite odd couple certainly have their opinions.

``I know nothing about it,'' Matthau says of the ``Titanic'' switch. ``But they're probably two totally different films. By the way, I suggested that, in this picture `Out to Sea,' they add a scene of two dinosaurs playing poker with us, then making love,'' Matthau joked. ``They thought it was a good idea but they didn't think they could really fit it in the picture.''

``The bad part of what's changed since the demise of the old studio system is that each film, now, has become too important,'' adds Lemmon, whose string of hits ranges from his very first film, the 1954 ``It Should Happen to You,'' to 1995's ``Grumpier Old Men,'' the sequel to the film that successfully reunited him with Matthau. ``If it goes a little bit over budget, 15 guys in gray flannel suits show up and each one says, `I'm a producer. What's happening?' ''

At least that wasn't part of ``Out to Sea's'' scenario. Shot for the most part on Hollywood soundstages, the comedy avoided the budget overruns that filming on the ocean inevitably trigger. Only a week was spent shooting in the Caribbean, on a real cruise aboard the MS Westerdam, where the 150-person film crew mingled with some 1,800 paying passengers.

Still, even on such a limited scale, ``It's very, very difficult to shoot anything on the water,'' according to ``Sea's'' director Martha Coolidge (``Rambling Rose,'' ``Valley Girl''). ``You'd think the ship would be like a building, but it's not. The doorways are not standard width; so even just a simple thing like walking into a room meant they had to break down all the equipment just to get it through. The elderly passengers had to use the elevators, so we had to carry the equipment up and down stairways. There was vibration all the time, a lot of sound ...''

A scam comedy that bears some resemblance to Billy Wilder's 1966 ``The Fortune Cookie,'' which was Lemmon and Matthau's first film team-up, ``Sea'' features Matthau as gambler Charlie Gordon and Lemmon as his widowed brother-in-law Herb Sullivan. Charlie wants to go on a cruise to meet and marry a rich woman who can get him out of debt, but the only way he can get on a ship is by working as a dance host.

But Charlie can't dance, so he tricks Herb, who can, into coming along. On board, the two guys fight like they always have - through the original film ``Odd Couple,'' Wilder's ``The Front Page'' and ``Buddy Buddy'' and the two Grumpies - and fall in love: Charlie with sexy Texan Liz LaBreche (Dyan Cannon) and Herb with the tentative, lonely Vivian (Gloria DeHaven).

Also appearing in the cast are television staples Rue McClanahan and Hal Linden, veteran hoofer Donald O'Connor (who's been a friend and dance partner of fellow Hollywood kid DeHaven since they were children), Broadway institution Elaine Stritch and, for the younger generation, ``Star Trek's'' Brent Spiner.

Toss in lots of great clothes, funny dances and an old-fashioned, carefree kind of tone, and you have a film that should get the nostalgia glands of older viewers working overtime.

But is that enough to carve out a commercial profile against ``Men in Black,'' the highly anticipated, Will Smith alien comedy that ``Sea'' opened against on Wednesday?

``It's pretty scary,'' Coolidge admits. ``I feel very confident and very good about the movie, but summer scares me. The big problem is, does the adult audience go out in large enough numbers in the summer to keep the movie in theaters? What'll happen is, if it doesn't establish itself quickly, they'll pull the movie for something else.

``But Fox is really determined to support it. And it is different from anything else out there. The other thing is, I've screened the movie and people laugh at it, no matter how old they are.''

Really big show

The film's leading ladies hope that ``Out to Sea's'' old-school virtues appeal as much to younger film fans as they did to them.

``The thing I like about it is that the whole family can go,'' says Cannon. ``It's got big sets, costumes and music; kind of like an old-fashioned movie, only new-fashioned because there's nothing like it now. Compared to some of the stuff we're feeding our kids in movies ... I think the films Hollywood's making are helping to ruin the world.''

``I, personally, got to a point where I wasn't going to movies as much because I got a little tired of just one more explosion,'' adds DeHaven, a popular song-and-dance woman during MGM's golden age and, more recently, an often-seen TV series guest star. ``You know, the bigger you could blow something up, supposedly, the bigger the movie was going to be. There's so much violence - and I'm not being Pollyannish about it, but that's all you're seeing.

``Why I think this movie will be good for all ages is that it's extremely funny, but there's also a very, very nice love story about people in their 70s. You don't see that on the screen, and I think it will be nice for younger people to see.''

Of course, Lemmon and Matthau's excellent comic timing is the true love story in this or any of their other funny films. Their late-career fortunes remain linked; recent attempts to pair up with different partners in ``My Fellow Americans'' and ``I'm Not Rappaport'' failed to click.

So the boys are currently shooting Neil Simon's long-in-coming sequel to ``The Odd Couple,'' and a third ``Grumpy'' is in the works. And even if ``Out to Sea's'' relative sophistication compared to the Grumpy films' vulgarity works against it commercially, Hollywood's last great comedy team should remain viable for as long as they can still make each other laugh.

``I saw `Out to Sea' the other day with a small audience, and it seemed rather dull to me,'' Matthau says, not necessarily complaining. ``But I can understand that it could be a success at the box office because it has music in it and jokes in it. It's not too believable; it's a nice film to fall asleep in. And it has some interpersonal relationships, instead of dinosaurs and explosions and hot sex with Julia Moore and Demi Roberts.

``We'd probably make more money, though, if we had two dinosaurs in `Out to Sea.' ''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--color) Dynamic Duo 

With `Speed 2' sinking and `Titanic' in dry dock, `Out to Sea' pros Lemmon, Matthou just keep sailing along.

(2) Longtime co-stars Walter Matthau, left, and Jack Lemmon reunite in the shipboard comedy ``Out to Sea.''