I had seen Art Carney a few times but had trouble remembering who he was. What better than his Academy Award-winning role to rectify that? That said, the bare-bones Netflix jacket description (which neglected to say Carney's first name) didn't inspire confidence in the plot. I'll give you a bit more.
Senior citizen Harry stays in his condemned New York apartment until removed by legal physical force. He spends a little while with extended family but feels a need for a place of his own, preferably in an L.A. neighborhood with less crime than his old one. The same stubbornness that kept him in that apartment now prevents him from taking a plane or bus the whole way, because he insists on the best for his cat, Tonto. Apparently, car vendors back in the day didn't have to check for expired licenses....
As you may imagine, Harry drives some people nuts. Fortunately, he wasn't hard for me to like. He's a fairly gentle retiree looking for his place in a new (very '70s) world, particularly when his old friends have all died or gone senile. I can relate to someone with old-fashioned taste, even if most of the songs he sings to "quiz" Tonto were completely unfamiliar to me.
And of course, I like Tonto. I generally appreciate real animals on screen, not just because they're cute but because they're the most natural actors, behaving basically the same every decade. My one concern is that this cat may not have had much fun getting carried or walked on a leash all the time.
Don't get the idea that the title characters are the only interesting ones. A grandson of Harry's, for instance, takes a vow of silence. Harry picks up a jailbait runaway heading for a commune. On the less hippie-ish side, he meets a former cat salesman. Everyone has a story that barely gets touched upon. Note: The R rating is primarily for swearing, along with some less salty talk of sex.
On the whole, I found HaT highly credible, insofar as I knew the setting. The only part I wasn't sure I'd buy was the swift efficacy of an American Indian's alternative medicine. IMDb does not list any huge errors in my judgment.
Emotionally, it's not all that powerful. It never gets far into comedy, and the dramatic moments don't dominate our thoughts for long. For this reason, I'm a little surprised Carney beat Al Pacino in The Godfather: Part II among other Oscar competitors. Maybe the Academy gave priority to the guy least likely to have another shot.
Nevertheless, HaT achieves its goal of not being dull for 115 minutes. Will I see more from director Paul Mazursky? Possibly, just not soon.
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