Harry and Tonto

Mazursky's odyssey traces elderly widower Harry's flight/trip across America in the company of cat Tonto after the demolition of his New York apartment. It's Candide again, with Harry not so much an innocent as a sympathetic, who is mugged, seduced, welcomed, depended upon, rejected, ever so gently. Its charm has a calculated feel, though, its individualities an edge of whimsy, its poetry is rhyming couplets. Harry's freedom to mix it with the kids, squeezing out their oppressed parents, is hammered home. Still, Mazursky has escaped Fellini's shadow; when everyone's back from going to 'look for America', he might have something interesting to say.