Senescent Saint

By S.K.

Senescent Saint "Tell me, do you think your old man has slipped his trolley--that he belongs in a laughing academy?" The old man is Joseph P. Kotcher. the academy is an old folks home, and the question is rhetorical. In Kotch, Walter Matthau plays a septuagenarian of shrewd independence; he has no intention of fading slowly into the sunset years. Because, among other offenses, he leaves the toilet seat up, Kotcher is eased out of his son's bickering household in Los Angeles and takes off for the Northwest, sightseeing and being lovable. Mostly being lovable. Wiping children's noses, helping strangers, and finally befriending a pregnant teenager (Deborah Winters), he is a regular saint of senescence, the sort of chap who could have made Walt Disney queasy.

Winters is one of the few young actresses with comic timing, and Matthau gives a carefully detailed impersonation of a Californian slipping into his anecdotage. He is both abetted and hindered by his director, a new boy named Jack Lemmon. Matthau and Lemmon first worked together as fellow actors in Fortune Cookie and consolidated their partnership in The Odd Couple. Lemmon obviously has great affection for his sidekick; in 114 minutes, the star is hardly ever offscreen.

But in his incessant concern to keep Matthau beautiful, Lemmon takes away dimension from everyone but Winters. Kotch's children are Punch and Judy, and his neighbors caricatures. Moreover, the soupy conclusion tends to weaken all that went before. Kotch is "family" entertainment, but in its anxiety to please, it eventually cloys. It is a yes-man of a movie that Joseph P. Kotcher would have disdained.

. S.K.

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