I'm Not Rappaport

Herb Gardner's Tony Award-winning play may be showing its age, but Walter Matthau and, especially, Ossie Davis, are as vital as ever as Nat and Midge, elderly men who testily share a Central Park bench. Nat, a former rabble rouser, drives Midge to distraction by fabricating stories about his past. Melodrama intrudes in the form of Nat's concerned daughter (Amy Irving) and a drug dealer (Craig T. Nelson), but the heart of the film is the tentative friendship that evolves between Nat and Midge, and their refusal to go quietly into that good night. Davis, in the straight man role, tempers Matthau's more flamboyant codger shtick. Recommended. (K. Lee Benson)