Harry and Tonto

1974 dramatic comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Harry is a retired public educator and widower living in New York City with his cat Tonto. After he's mugged for the fourth time in a year and his apartment building is torn down, he moves in with one of his sons. It doesn't work out well, so he travels across the country with his cat, stopping every once in a while to meet random people or engage in disturbing acts of bestiality with Tonto.

Chief Dan George is the best thing about any movie that he is in. Harry meets him in prison, and I laughed twice during their encounter. "What are you in for?" "Peeing." "Oh. I once was ticketed for shitting." And also when Chief Dan George's character exchanges a medicine man cure for bursitis for Harry's underpants.

This meandering episodic movie doesn't really deliver humorously, dramatically, or philosophically and seems very much a product of 1974. There's nothing wrong with it, and I like movies where people (even really old people) embark on pointless excursions, but this just sort of starts, bubbles a little bit, festers, grows mold, palpitates, and then ends. None of the characters he meets really seem interesting enough to pay attention to. The acting is ok in this, but it's interesting to me that Art Carney beat out Nicholson, Pacino, and Hoffman (Chinatown, Godfather II, and Lenny, the latter which I have not seen) for best actor. I wasn't thinking "best actor" while watching this. Admittedly, I might be biased. I don't like cats. If Harry had a pet monkey or traveled around the country with a midget, I think I would have liked it a lot better.

Here I am watching Harry and Tonto: