The film centers on Harold is a young boy attempts to gain his mother's attention. He is always obsessed the death. One day, his life changed absoluetly when he encounters a 79-year-old woman at a funeral.
Simpleminded, but it's fairly inoffensive, at least until Ashby lingers over the concentration-camp serial number tattooed on Gordon's arm. Some things are beyond the reach of whimsy.
This darkly humorous ,romantic comedy between an introvert adolescent and and old spunky woman, is playing it too safe to be considered truly anti-establishment, but it became a cult picture.
Unlike claustrophobically cute odd-couple movies, bottles some of the flavour of its time. Harold's fake suicides are a pale defiance and reflection of his cloistered, sapped life. The vital counterculture (Maude) helps Harold avoid the army.
[Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon] both are so aggressive, so creepy and off-putting.
Chicago Sun-Times
October 23, 2004
The visual style makes everyone look fresh from the Wax Museum, and all the movie lacks is a lot of day-old gardenias and lilies and roses in the lobby, filling the place with a cloying sweet smell. Nothing more to report today.
The fact that [it] isn't very funny and, like its 80-year-old heroic, long outlives its necessary life, is less important than the fact that the characters frequently react gently or like credible human beings to the script's impossible notions.