The first screen teaming of Henry Fonda with Katharine Hepburn (as well as with, in a much smaller role, his daughter Jane) has stirred up some inordinately sentimental responses in some quarters. But it is questionable whether this couple — Fonda the stolid, board-stiff, slightly tormented Midwesterner, Hepburn the blissfully irrepressible, poetic-souled, Bryn Mawr-educated East Coaster — go together like ham and eggs (ham sounds right, though, for one or both). This would hardly seem to be a match made in heaven, unless perhaps the aim is to put together a snappish and snappy comedy duo to challenge Burns and Allen: an eternally chipper straight man (or rather, woman) and a cantankerous wisecracker. Which is pretty much what we indeed get. Ernest Thompson's script, adapted from his own stage play, is a sort of volleyball game of set-ups and spikes, in which a self-effacing Hepburn (or other cast member) is continually feeding Fonda the point-winner. This routine is interrupted now and again with something "touching," or with calendar-art nature inserts, or with the latest installment in Fonda's ongoing obsessive pursuit of an elusive rainbow trout nicknamed Walter — but who would perhaps better have been dubbed Moby Trout. These mood changes are parceled out in accordance with standard TV-sitcom pacing and somebody's textbook notion of a dramaturgical balanced diet. Directed by Mark Rydell. (1981) — Duncan Shepherd
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