‘Sunshine Boys’ Seems Lost in Simon Time Warp

There’s not a glimmer of light in a CBS production of “The Sunshine Boys.”

After sitting on the shelf for a couple of years, this laborious version of Neil Simon’s 1972 play delivers a flat thud, with Peter Falk and Woody Allen lacking chemistry as a crotchety, creaky pair of former vaudevillesque comics whose attempted reunion for a TV special is doomed because of their unreasonable antipathy for each other.

A movie based on the play earned an Oscar nomination for George Burns, who was teamed with Walter Matthau, and a Broadway revival starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall was launched earlier this month.

Willie Clark (Falk) is the especially growly, petulant half of this duo, and Al Lewis (Allen) the more likable. Reluctantly, they agree to attempt a reunion that is urged on them by Willie’s niece and agent (Sarah Jessica Parker), whose main task here is to show angst and be a straight woman (Simon wrote the character as male) for the endless one-liners ground out by these irritating veterans.

Originally set in the ‘70s, the play is given some contemporary signposts here, such as “Seinfeld” and Oprah Winfrey, that strand Lewis and Clark in a time warp that seems incompatible chronologically with the era in which they are said to have had their heyday. But the show’s problems are deeper than that.

The comedy team’s first meeting after an eight-year separation goes badly, about as badly, in fact, as this slow, grueling, John Erman-directed rendering that is nearly humorless and devoid of the poignancy that Simon sought to give his characters.

* “The Sunshine Boys” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS.