The Late Show

Art Carney makes this film. He is so damn cool as the private eye at least thirty years past his heyday that I'm entirely willing to forgive Tomlin's obnoxiousness.

Viewed February 8, 2021. A charming B side to The Long Goodbye. Carney is great and his mismatch with Lily Tomlin is a lot of fun.

A wanna-be send-up of hard-boiled noir thrillers but it is all over the place with no real direction. Art Carney is great, but Lily Tomlin is broad and hilariously unfunny. The driver of the plot is Carney wanting to find his friend's killer, but it takes a back seat to pointless side stories; often you forget all about this until its mentioned that this is the whole point of the movie. That'd be fine if it was funnier; it'd be fine if it had a more invested plot, but it doesn't have either.

85.500

The cast is The Thing here. The mystery is too complicated for its own good, but the generational clash between Carney as an elderly private eye and Tomlin as the ditsy young thing who hires him to find her cat makes for a pleasing 90 minutes. I saw this in the theaters when it first came out and it remains something that I watch and rewatch to this day.

80.875

Amusing genre melange, shows a lot of influence from producer Altman.

Tomlin as a kooky hippy-type and Carney an overweight, broken down PI form an improbable couple--with an improbable romance, to boot, and yet it works. Good story overall as well.