The story of Elwood P. Dowd who makes friends with a spirit taking the form of a human-sized rabbit named Harvey that only he sees (and a few privileged others on occasion also.) After his sister tries to commit him to a mental institution, a comedy of errors ensues. Elwood and Harvey become the catalysts for a family mending its wounds and for romance blossoming in unexpected places.
Unhappily, what the film also borrows from the play, and somehow makes more conspicuous, is a tendency to drag its feet for long stretches, especially during the virtually actionless last third of the story.
– ,
TIME Magazine,
29 Mar 2011
rotten:
Charming, lightweight stuff (from a play by Mary Chase), so long as you can take Stewart's ingenuousness, but it does wear thin.
– Derek Adams,
Time Out,
9 Feb 2006
fresh:
If you're for warm and gentle whimsey, for a charmingly fanciful farce and for a little touch of pathos anent the fateful evanescence of man's dreams, then the movie version of Harvey is definitely for you.
– Bosley Crowther,
New York Times,
25 Mar 2006
fresh:
Harvey, Mary Chase's Pulitzer Prize play, loses little of its whimsical comedy charm in the screen translation.