Fantastic!

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

I caught this movie on television after not having seen it in 40 years. I ran it for 2 weeks while working as a projectionist in a second run house in Connecticut at the time. First, you have a wonderful cast. Not only the four principles but it's hard to imagine a bad movie with Charles Durning, Jack Guilford, Val Avery, Leslie Ann Warren and Burt Young in the supporting cast. As improbable as the script is everyone seems to be having fun. We are in the realm of the classic door-slamming bedroom farce comedies mated to the caper movie with a couple of lovable losers involved in machinations they cannot hope to understand. Consider it as a double bill with Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks. Michael Caine gets to hone a role as comic villain that will find its fuller expression In Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels. Basically, Harry and Walter is good, silly fun. If you want a great caper movie, Watch The Sting or Topkapi. If you want something that will occasionally have you spitting popcorn while laughing, try this movie, sit back and enjoy yourself. just remember,Nobody's perfect. Nobody at all.

An earlier poster commented that it came and went in the theaters. That's because (at least in America), it was savaged by the critics. But when I saw this on cable a little while after, I actually found it to be very funny, and even taped it for my personal collection. The sequence at the end when Harry and Walter are doing what they can to extend the play so they can steal the money is very funny. When James Caan stops the play and starts singing his lines that, "he's not the real Prince Herbert, I am!" I thought was really great. I remember the "owls who" line as well, but Caan's singing his lines was what I most enjoyed in that movie. I also liked the scene where Caan and Gould go into the fancy restaurant, order fancy wine, and have no idea what to do when the sommelier tries to serve it to them.

Made on the HELLO DOLLY set, this bumbling farce looks sensational and in some ways is actually as lush as DOLLY itself. With a spectacular cast and some very funny lines - and especially the genuinely hilarious NOBODY'S PERFECT song - H&W somehow just misses being really really good. Any opportunity to see Carol Kane on screen is a must. Barely released in 1976 this film is worth seeing in glorious widescreen, just for the visuals around the DOLLY set. It actually looks as though you will see Streisand singing somewhere in the background. It is probably the only two million dollar film with a three million dollar set. Deserving of a lavish DVD release it could easily become a collectors item for many reasons...if only the comedy was genuinely one of them. The ideas are all there and the cast and the lushness, but you just fell it is all a bit forced.

A pair of inept vaudevillians team up with a liberal newswoman to rob a bank. Her reasons were for the furtherance of mankind. At the same time a notorious thief and his gang are plotting the same job. The reason he uses is simple revenge. This was pretty banal stuff, but was fairly entertaining and had a ridiculously funny ending.