Carney's apartment building is demolished, and Carney decides to hit the road, visiting first his son Philip Bruns, then his daughter Ellen Burstyn in Chicago, and his son Larry Hagman in Los Angeles. Along the way, Carney has encounters with young hitchhiker Melanie Mayron, old flame Geraldine Fitzgerald, jail cellmate Sam Two Feathers, cheerful prostitute Barbara Rhoades, and vitamin salesman Arthur Hunnicut.
How others will see it. Art Carney is best known for playing Norton, best friend of Jackie Gleason in the influential "Honeymooners" sitcom. Carney found steady work in the years after, but his best work came in two 1970s movies, Harry and Tonto and Going in Style. Carney landed an Oscar for the former, beating out heavy competition from two much more significant films, Jack Nicholson in Chinatown and Al Pacino in The Godfather Part II. Presumably, the two Hollywood titans drew enough votes from each other to allow dark horse Carney to somehow eke out the unlikely win.
Harry and Tonto is seen for Carney's performance. It did receive one other Oscar nomination, for Mazursky's screenplay, though Mazursky was not nominated for Best Director. The movie did land a Golden Globe nomination for Best Comedy or Musical, though the movie was certainly not a musical and actually isn't a comedy either. It is, instead, a character study.
Today at imdb.com, the movie has a miserly 4300 user votes (by comparison, Chinatown has 245K user votes) but the user rating is fairly high at 7.4 out of 10. Viewers find Art Carney likable and compelling on his seemingly endless quest to find a suitable place to eke out his remaining years with his cat Tonto. Plucky Carney has no shortage of offers, but New York City tore down the only place he ever wanted to call home.
How I felt about it. I know something about cats. They do not like to be taken on walks, given rides in cars, or confronted with new surroundings on a daily basis. They like the familiar, whether it be ten acres to prowl or simply an apartment to occupy. Engaging as Carney may be, I mostly felt sorry for the cat, who had to endure no end of confusing and unwanted changes.
It is curious that Carney must be forcibly removed from his ill-fated New York City apartment, yet for the remainder of the film refuses to stay in any one place. He won't live with his kids, who want him around since their lives are equally unsettled. He is fortunate that he is arrested for public urination instead of transporting an underaged runaway across state lines, which today could put him in prison for the many years.
Despite his misadventures, Carney is never really in trouble because he has an ace up his sleeve: a funded bank account. This comes in handy on several occasions. No wonder he didn't want to leave his NYC flat. It was probably rent-controlled, which allowed him to save up unknowingly for his future adventures.
Though Hollywood glory cast its light on Harry Carney, another winner was writer/director Mazursky, who would make an even better movie a few years later, An Unmarried Woman. Down and Out in Beverly Hills was pretty good, too, and the same can be said for I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!, which he served as co-writer. Mazursky's cinematic efforts were inconsistent, though, and his movie career is dominated by supporting roles as an actor. It remains unclear why some Mazursky films (as a writer and director) are much better than others.