DVD: I'm Not Rappaport (12)

In the last years before his death in 2000, Walter Matthau gave good grumpy old man.

But even his charming irascibility can't save this 1996 adaptation by writer-director Herb Gardner of his play of the same name. Matthau is Nat, a disappointed radical who spends his days talking hokey nonsense with Midge (Ossie Davis) in Central Park. Their efforts to help the waifs and strays they meet have a surreal edge that may have worked on stage but feels contrived on screen. Gardner the director is hopelessly indulgent of Gardner the writer's tendency towards flaccid sentimentality. Why it should get a UK DVD release is a mystery.