bkoganbing House Calls is a nice romantic comedy about two mature people finding each other the second time around. Of course both Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson have spent a lot of time looking especially Matthau.Matthau is a doctor at Kensington General Hospital in Los Angeles who is just back from a leave of absence for a few months. He's a widower and after the proper mourning period has gone a nice hedonistic binge in Hawaii and is now back. He spots Jackson as a patient at the hospital and sees what he considers an egregious wrong done by her doctor. Matthau corrects it and earns the wrath of the chief surgeon Art Carney.Jackson is a divorcee with a teenage son who left her husband because she was tired of him pursuing as she puts it 'the all American humping record'. They're different people but Jackson and Matthau hit it off even though the road to romance has a few potholes.House Calls is as much a romantic comedy as a satire on American medicine. It's a subject that Matthau and Jackson have very diametrically opposed views. Jackson thinks that all doctor ought to be Albert Schweitzer and that just doesn't happen in the real world.No budding Schweitzers at Kensington General. Art Carney is absolutely brilliant as the over aged Chief of Surgery who is having touches of senility, but won't retire. Funny, but a bit frightening as well. I suspect there are more Carneys out there than one would like to admit.Some of the other staff includes as doctors Richard Benjamin, Gordon Jump, and Dick O'Neill. Candice Azzara has a juicy role as a widow wanting to sue for malpractice on the death of her husband. Guess who gets the dirty job to woo her a bit?House Calls succeeds quite nicely as romance and satire not an easy combination to pull off.

SimonJack I may be stretching it a bit to rate this film six stars. And it gets that rating mostly for the fine performance of Art Carney as Dr. Amos Willoughby. Glenda Jackson is good as Ann Atkinson. While Walter Matthau isn't bad as Dr. Charley Nichols, his character is missing the zip he usually brings to comedy. I think that may be due to a very weak screenplay. For a comedy, this one is quite lame, with little humor other than an occasional smile. The romance is the best part as Charley settles down and gets very comfortable with Ann. One can see and sense that happening in a middle-aged couple that hit it off. I think Matthau is supposed to be playing an MD a few years younger than his true 58 years here. Jackson is about on target as a 42-year old divorcée. The humor in the hospital was so-so. A good screenplay could have made much more out of this. Again, with the march of time, movies about ineptitude and incompetence of hospital staff, doctors especially, aren't likely to set too well with most audiences of today.

gridoon A tediously unfunny, thoroughly predictable (complete with the two leads arguing-and-making-up for a "happy ending" in crowded city streets) romantic comedy, which can't be saved even by Matthau's unforced likability. Uninspired script, almost no laughs delivered.

chez-3 "House Calls" is a wonderful romantic comedy that can best be described as "how they used to make them." It stars Walter Matthau (in one of his best roles) as a recently widowed doctor who goes out on the dating scene again and hits paydirt as he seems to have a different woman every night. He then meets hospital patient Glenda Jackson and soon develops a relationship with her. But it's one that will be severely tested as she informs him she is a one man woman and expects him to be a one woman man.This is a sweet, very funny film also starring Art Carney as the senile hospital administrator and Richard Benjamin as Matthau's friend and fellow doctor. It's a must see for any Matthau fan or any fan of light comedy.You won't be disappointed.