Walk Don’t Run

Directed by Charles Walters, Walk Don’t Run follows Cary Grant’s William Rutland as he coerces a woman (Samantha Eggar’s Christine Easton) into letting him stay at her apartment during the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games – with complications ensuing after an athlete (Jim Hutton’s Steve Davis) winds up staying at said apartment as well. Filmmaker Walters, working from Sol Saks’ screenplay, delivers a sluggish and mostly underwhelming romantic comedy that’s rarely (if ever) as charming as one might’ve anticipated (and hoped), and there’s little doubt, certainly, that the picture’s arms-length atmosphere is compounded by a stagy, uneventful narrative that often seems to be unfolding in slow motion – with this particularly true of an opening stretch that wastes so much time on the characters’ morning routine (ie it’s just tedious stuff). And while Grant offers up a predictably affable turn, Walk Don’t Run‘s focus on the would-be romantic relationship between Eggar and Hutton’s respective (and hopelessly bland) figures paves the way for a progressively tiresome midsection and second half – which, when coupled with a thoroughly lackluster climax, ultimately confirms the film’s place as a disappointingly forgettable misfire.

*1/2 out of ****