"Harry and Walter Go to New York" is growing on me. It's not as good as it should have been but it does have a lot going for it. The cast is very good and they all do a nice job. The set design and the costumes are top-notch. But for some reason, "Harry and Walter..." doesn't work as well as it should have. Sometimes a movie's production values and smother it's humor. I think that might have happened here. Also, especially in the first half, the editing seemed off. A lot of the jokes were ruined with too quick cutaways. That said, I do enjoy a lot of this movie. It's not a total write-off. It's definitely worth watching.

Hairy wallets were the box office results of this starry but flat caper comedy that is delightful to look at but thanks to a tepid script the audience cold. You'd think with a cast including Elliott Gould, James Caan, Michael Caine and Diane Keaton that this film would have been a smash Hit. But obviously word-of-mouth got around and the audience, having felt stung several times with big cast/big budget comedies they could afford to miss this one. It's another period game supposedly written to be funny that is nice to look at with its gaudy sets but ultimately a visit to dullsville.

On-screen, the cast looks like it's having a blast, perhaps unaware of the big turkey that they are in. It wasn't until afterwards when the final results were seen that they all realized that it's just an empty-headed retread caper comedies that they've seen dozens of times and not nearly as good. It's hard to believe that any third-rate burlesque or vaudeville house would hire the wretched singing and dancing entertainers that Gould and Caan play here, so when the two men end up in jail for theft, it's the movie audience that's applauding, not only the minimal audience in the theater within the film.

In his initial conversation with the two, sophisticated criminal mastermind Caine should have been instantly aware of the dim light bulbs he was talking to. In fact, there doesn't seem to be an intelligent character in the film until suffragette reporter Diane Keaton shows up, and fortunately, this is a performance without her usual tics. The character actors who have smaller roles also fared better, with Charles Durning, Jack Gilford, Bert Remsen and Burt Young all delivering their usual dependable performances. This is the type of bad comedy that critics loved tearing apart with bad puns, and as a result, hardly anybody went to see it which is why it is basically forgotten today.

Labored with a director like Mark Rydell who has an uncanny knack for making a million dollar movie look like it was shot on a shoe- string, this is not a trip I would recommend. Mr. Rydell is really in his element here. He just loves to ignore his million dollar sets and concentrate instead on Elliott Gould's unprepossessing mug as if he were directing some small-scale TV show and not a film designed by Harry Horner and photographed by Laslo Kovacs. No less than three editors were employed to try to disguise Rydell's inadequacies. It seems Mr. Rydell took no notice of anybody. He didn't even bother to read the credits. For instance, there's a credit he ignored that told us that the stained glass windows in the restaurant set were based on designs by Alphonse Muca. What stained glass windows? Did you see any stained glass windows? I didn't! They were probably hidden behind Charles Durning's right ear. The screenplay – or at least as much of it as manages to percolate through Rydell's heavy hand – is occasionally not without interest, though why Rydell spends so much time on a scene in which Harry tries to persuade Walter to go to New York, beggars the imagination. For your information, Mr. Durning, that's what a movie entitled Harry and Walter Go to New York is all about. Elliott Gould plays Walter and is his usual camera-hogging style. On the other hand, Carol Kane and Jack Gilford are wasted in minuscule parts. But if you can wait that long, there is a nice climax where the songs finally come to the fore in an amusing Ruritanian pastiche.