Warm Puppy

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

HARRY & SON Directed by Paul Newman Screenplay by Paul Newman and Ronald L. Buck

When he is out bowling in the first reel, Harry's vision suddenly blurs and his arm goes numb. And so do one's expectations for the movie. For grim experience warns that when otherwise hearty middle-aged males (Harry happily wields the wrecker's ball on construction sites) suffer alarming physical symptoms right after the opening credits, more than unemployment and a heart attack are sure to follow. The crisis will be the occasion for lugubrious but ultimately uplifting reflections on a number of important matters: aging and mortality, the relationship between men and women and, as the title implies, the bonds between fathers and sons. This is especially likely to be true when the star, in this case Paul Newman, has as many credits on the film as Orson Welles had on Citizen Kane.

Most of what Newman has to get off his chest is unexceptional and unoriginal. Until his heart began skipping beats, pride in his work and a six-pack chilling in the fridge were enough to sustain Harry. Since his wife's death, he has alienated his daughter, denied himself the grandfatherly pleasures and rejected the no-nonsense companionability of a neighbor lady (Joanne Woodward at her unaffected best). He has been particularly hard on his son Howard (Robby Benson), who lives at home and aspires to be a writer. With all these obvious preconditions, one starts to wonder how long it will take Harry to re-examine his life and try bouncing to the beat of what should be the movie's title song, Try a Little Tenderness. The answer is, a shade too long

But the film's slowness and predictability are not its major problems. As a director, Newman has set himself two obstacles that prove more stubborn: one is his own powerful presence as an actor; the other is Robby Benson's lack of one. Newman may be pushing 60 in chronological fact but he looks as if he is barely pushing 50' And while it's inspiring to see his famous piercing gaze undimmed by the passing years, his vigor vitiates his attempt to portray a man to whom death has dropped a broad hint, just as it undermined his try at alcoholic despair in The Verdict & year ago He does his best to hide his glow, but the effort makes him seem absentminded.

Still, Newman is inevitably a force to reckon with, and that makes his casting of the feeble Benson the more surprising-surely he knows he can hold the screen against a real actor. Howard is supposed to be a rebel and a goof-off, but with a core of sensitivity and integrity supporting his literary ambitions and his resistance to Harry's loud demands that he find steady work. But Benson is one of those performers who appear to be playing for the mirror instead of the camera; nothing interferes with his pleased self-contemplation Harry's boy should have been a mutt, the way his father must once have been,' but Benson plays him like a doggy in a pet shop window, always hoping someone will scratch his tummy. All one can say in his defense is that his director makes a similar choice at every significant turn in the film. Newman does not rage at the dying light; he keeps trying to cuddle up to it -By Richard Schickel