Harry & Son

By the end, we can guess what Newman was up to, and how warm a story he meant to make. But nothing comes together until one of the characters is written out, and by that time, it is almost always too late. [02 Mar 1984, p.D1]

Benson is as annoyingly untalented as ever, and the film is definitely overlong, bordering on the dull.

It would take a more expert director than Newman to pull the lumpy Harry & Son screenplay into shape, with its many trite scenes that can't decide whether they're funny or sad or in between. [19 Apr 1984, p.25]

Newman has certainly directed well in the past (Rachel, Rachel), but he flounders helplessly here, unable to find a tone or a shape for his comical-mawkish story. [12 Mar 1984, p.89]

A curiously indigestible phenomenon, like being forced to eat five courses of avocado by an overbearing dinner-party host.

Fuzzily conceived and indecisively executed, Harry & Son represents a deeply disappointing return to the director's chair for Paul Newman. Cowritten and coproduced by the star as well, pic [suggested by the novel A Lost King by Raymond DeCapite] never makes up its mind who or what it wants to be about and, to compound the problem, never finds a proper style in which to convey the tragicomic events that transpire.

The movie might have worked if it had been a satire of those awful made-for-TV Family Problem Movies.