Who’s Harry Crumb?

Directed by Paul Flaherty, Who’s Harry Crumb? follows John Candy’s title figure, an inept private investigator, as he sets out to locate and rescue a kidnapped heiress (Renée Coleman’s Jennifer). Filmmaker Flaherty, armed with a script by Robert Conte and Peter Martin Wortmann, delivers a perpetually silly and over-the-top comedy that does, for the most part, fare better than one might’ve anticipated, as the picture, which runs an appropriately (and appreciatively) brisk 90 minutes, boasts and benefits from Candy’s ingratiating and often laugh-out-loud funny turn as the agreeably dimwitted central character – with Candy’s first-class efforts matched by such eclectic (and scene-stealing) periphery players as Jeffrey Jones, Annie Potts, and Tim Thomerson. And while the decidedly hit-and-miss bent of the movie’s jokes and gags does result in a handful of lulls, Who’s Harry Crumb?‘s pervasively affable atmosphere does, in the end, carry it through its lackluster stretches and confirms its place as a decent (yet hardly essential) Candy comedy.

**1/2 out of ****