Qui est Harry Kellerman?

Harry Kellerman was a most unfulfilling film for me, as unfulfilling as Dustin Hoffman found his life to be in this movie. Hoffman plays a successful rock composer who is going through a mid life crisis and finds all of a sudden in his middle Thirties he's not a really happy guy despite all the money in the world and the toys that money can buy. His best time is flying his private plane, talk about toys.

For some reason I couldn't get into this film or feel any kind of sympathy for Hoffman's character of George Soloway. Hoffman's best friend seems to be his analyst Jack Warden, hamming it up in his best Viennese accent. Dustin has more real and imagined time with Warden than anyone else in the film. In fact Warden functions as an alter ego for him, more inside his head than in real life on the couch.

The last straw for Hoffman seems to be some mysterious dude named Harry Kellerman who for some reason is calling up all of Hoffman's friends of both sexes and badmouthing him all over the place. As his relationships crumble all around him, Hoffman goes on a frantic manhunt for Kellerman.

With all the imaginary sequences in this film, if you can't figure out who Harry Kellerman is before a quarter of the film is over you haven't seen too many films at all. Think a kinder, gentler Fight Club.

Hoffman does the best he can to make some coherent sense out of his character, but in the end he's not someone I care terribly about. Rose Gregorio as his ex-wife, David Burns as his father, and Gabriel Dell as his cheerfully hedonistic songwriting partner are the best in the film.

Barbara Harris as a woman who seems to have as much angst as Hoffman got an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, she lost in the Oscar sweepstakes to Cloris Leachman for The Last Picture Show, an infinitely better film. Harris's character is interesting, she represents a last chance for Hoffman at love. She has her problems, but without as much money, she seems to be coping a lot better. Another reason for me to not care about Hoffman's George Soloway.

The ambiance of the early Seventies rock scene is captured well. Would that George Soloway in Harry Kellerman be someone you could actually get worked up over.

Any movie that takes place over the course of just one day can tend to drag unless it's filled with non-stop action. This film is no exception. If you love Acting with a capital "A" over Action, this is your film.

What makes this a movie worth seeing are the actors; Dustin Hoffman, Barbara Harris, and Jack Ward all turn in supreme performances. Even the bit parts are well-written and equally well-acted. The dialogue is sharp, witty and sadly comic.

Dustin Hoffman plays a highly successful songwriter who suffers from insomnia and the dementia it brings as he looks back on the relationships he's had throughout his life, hoping to break his loneliness.

Hoffman does an excellent job of portraying a creative genius, one whose creativity is so abundant he seems unable to turn it off. In most of the scenes, Hoffman is strumming a guitar, singing under his breath, presumably writing a new song with each emotion he feels at any given moment. Because the music that flows through him occupies so much of his brain, he seems unable to focus on human relationships and by middle age the loneliness catches up with him.

Hoffman drifts in and out of reality. Deciding which scenes are real, and which are his imagination is up to the viewer. Or as Hoffman tells his psychiatrist "Why should I come back to reality? What's it ever done for me?"

It should also be noted that as much as Simon and Garfunkel did for "The Graduate," so does this film's soundtrack accentuate the overall feel of the movie with music from Ray Charles and Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show.

This is a difficult movie, but worth staying with it if you like fully developed characters, emotional depth and you don't mind something outside the normal linear Hollywood story telling format. Dustin Hoffman gives a fine nuanced performance and Barbara Harris is wonderful as a vulnerable woman all too aware that she has lost her youth. Her performance is touching and every moment she is on screen shines with her unique brilliance.

Despite its nudging, rambling title and Dustin Hoffman's mildly hippie appearance, "Who Is Harry Kellerman..." is a rather old-fashioned quest for one man seeking the Meaning of Life, which screenwriter Herb Gardner sees as being undermined by the inevitability of death. There are no pretenses here towards embracing a pseudo-hip scenario, and the lack of modish overtones keeps the film relevant and fresh. Hoffman plays an East Coast songwriter, currently being hailed by Time magazine as a prophet, who sees nothing meaningful in his existence, harkening back on his ordinary boyhood in order to make peace with the present. Accentuated by bursts of rock music, and defined by little bits of mordant truth, the film blessedly isn't a silly phantasmagoria, although some may see all this as a con--written by somebody who is out of step with the times (Gardner wrote the coy "A Thousand Clowns" after all). Yet, the movie manages a melancholic, sobering, almost disenfranchised tone, with director Ulu Grosbard mostly interested in revealing something tangible through his characters. Hoffman's Georgie Soloway can't enjoy living without relating it to dying, and so has suicidal flights-of-fancy, paranoiac personal dramas, and surreal sessions with a Viennese analyst. It's a good role for the star, while Oscar-nominated Barbara Harris is wonderful in the small part of a struggling actress who's still in love with 1957. It takes a while to get into the movie's groove, but there are worthwhile thoughts here, helped immeasurably by Victor Kemper's non-fussy cinematography and Grosbard's deep connection with the material. **1/2 from ****

Potentially brilliant character study misses the mark as Hoffman plays a successful singer/songwriter who ends up badly tormented. Excessive smugness permeates a otherwise well crafted, well mounted production. Clearly the filmmakers thought they had a important "statement" picture. Unfortunately the statement becomes evasive and eventually muddled. Worth seeing just for Hoffman, who gives one of his best performances