everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Because it's neither. Twice I have tried to watch this film, and each time I got about halfway through before I called it quits. In the right role Lily Tomlin pops off the screen, here her performance is lethargic and her timing is way off. I suspect it has a lot to do with Art Carney's performance...sometimes a mismatched buddy comedy really works like Rush Hour or Lethal Weapon. In this film I kept waiting for something to happen, and while the clues roll out, they emerge with all the speed and snap of a sleepy tortoise. If they had picked up the pace this could have been an interesting film, but constantly referring to how old Art Carney's character is does nothing but slow the film down. Even the retirement home sci-fi film Cocoon proved that older actors can entertain with snappy dialogue and quick cuts, so there is no excuse for this film's glacial pace. Fool me twice, shame on me.

The Late Show is a murder mystery, a comedy, and a sort of romantic relationship that is so entertaining and real that you don't even mind that you can't follow the plot. The film was directed by Robert Benton who received an Oscar nomination for best screenplay and stars Art Carney ("Harry and Tonto") and Lily Tomin, (nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress) in two terrific performances.In the film, a takeoff on 40s film noir, Ira Wells (Carney) is a sixty-something washed up private eye with a bum leg and a perforated ulcer and his client Margo Stirling (Lily Tomlin) is a slightly wacky but charming woman (also irritating), fluent in seventies enlightenment lingo. Together they team up to look for the creep that killed Ira's best friend Harry Regan (Howard Duff). And not so quiet flows the blood as well as the laughs as they unravel a convoluted plot that requires a PhD minimum to understand. The blood is there to remind us that it is serious business. Otherwise, we would never know. It's such great fun.

Directed by Robert Benton, "The Late Show" (1977) stars Art Carney as Ira Wells, an elderly private detective. When he's hired to find the missing cat of the volatile Margo (Lily Tomlin), Wells is provided an opportunity to showcase his talents."Show" was produced by Robert Altman. It also bears some similarities to Altman's "The Long Goodbye" (1973), both films opening with a missing feline and both films transplanting a 1940s noir hero to the 1970s. Wells is caught out of time, is chastised for being "old", "out of touch" and "outdated", but nevertheless proceeds to prove his doubters wrong. The film climaxes with Margo and Welles unravelling a conspiracy that is wholly typical of the genre.Whilst Carney and Tomlin are endearing in their roles, "The Late Show" doesn't do enough to rise above similar films from the era ("Chandler", "Harper", "Marlowe", "Night Movies", "The Long Goodbye" etc). Benton would revisit similar material with 1998's "Twilight".7/10 – See "Cutter's Way".

**SPOILERS** Nostalgic 1977 movie that's more like a 1940's film-noir crime suspense/drama with an over the hill private eye Ira Wells, Art Carney, teaming up with a middle-age hippie Margo Sperling, Lily Tomlin, to solve the murder of Ira's long-time friend of over 30 years, and also private detective, Harry Regan, Howard Duff. Harry coming to see Ira at his rooming house one evening collapses and dies right in front of him from a 45 slug in his chest. At Harry's funeral Ira gets to see his friend Charlie, Bill Macy, who has this young woman Margo Sperling with him and want's Ira to find her missing cat Winston. Having no patience to go looking for cats at his age Ira changes his mind when he finds out that Harry was on the case, in finding Winston, at the time of his murder and feels that Harry trying to find Margo's cat may have had something to do with his untimely death. Ira was right dead right. The serious Ira teaming up with spaced-out, on ideas about life not drugs, Margo realizes that Harry's murder was but a small part of a series of crimes, including at least four other killings, involving big time L.A gangster Ron Birdwell, Eugene Roche. Brdwell's wife Laura, Joanna Cassidy, has been missing for some three days and was involved with a Mr. Whiting who together with his wife both ended up dead. It takes a while for Ira to get to the bottom of what's been going on between Birdwell and the Whitings but with the help of screwy pseudo-philosophical Margo, who turns out to be a lot smarter then Ira at first thought, he puts all the pieces together. Ira comes up with not only who killed both the Whitings but who murdered his friend Harry Regan as well and, on top of all that, Ira finds Margo's cat Winston. The cat it turns out has been sitting on the evidence, a .32 pistol, to connect all the killings as well as it being used to blackmail Laura; in keeping her mouth shut about who's responsible for a sting of unconnected and unsolved murders in the L.A area.Art Carney giving the performance of his life as the broken down PI Ira Wells takes it on the chin and in the gut throughout the entire movie from hoodlums like Birdwell and his sadistic bodyguard Lamar, John Considine. Ira also has to puts up with the New Age Guru-like Margo, who he gets to like despite her almost talking him to death. Lily Tomlin is perfect as the over-age hippie Margo Sperling who also begins to take life seriously when she realizes that she and Ira's lives are in danger in an elaborate scheme to distance the Whiting murders away from those responsible for them and make them look like a robbery gone wrong. Ira who really got on the case to find who murdered Harry Regan finding Winston was only secondary for him and gets a lot more then he bargained for including a brutal beating by Lamar ,who he later pays back with interest. In the end he finds not only who killed Harry but a new place to stay, Margo's place, after his landlady kicked him out of her house for giving her more headaches and excitement then his rent could compensate her for: $42,50 a month. Art Carney besides having ulcers problems in the movie as Ira Wells walked with a limp, because of a bum leg, which in real life he really had from being wounded in France, by an exploding German artillery shell in World War Two.