James Garner's latest wildcat well has come up dry, and he needs money to continue operations. So he flies up to New York City and starts raising cash. His peregrinations around Wall Street bring him to Lee Remick, who's been handed a dead stock to unload; her certain failure will give her boss, Jim Backus, an excuse to fire her. He's reckoned without Garner and his cohort of high-rolling Texans as played by Phil Harris, Chill Wills, and Charles Watts.

Another of my old friends, this movie is like that pal you had as a kid, who modeled himself on Eddie Haskell. Everyone knew he would come to no good, but he was so darned much fun, and here he still is, doing fine. This movie has it all: a good, satiric view of how Wall Street and the tax code operated, everyone a smug caricature ten years out of date when the movie was released, everyone out for a buck, and some fine comic performers, including Louis Nye, John Astin, Pat Harrington Jr., Robert Strauss, and Pat Crowley. What's that, you say? Of course Charles Lane is in it. How can you not like a movie that makes fun of everyone who shows up on the screen?

Enjoyed this very silly comedy from 1963 along with some great actors like James Garner, (Henry Tyroon) who is a wheel and dealer, who decides to leave Midland, Texas and come to the big Apple because all his oil wells are drying up and blowing plain dust. However, Henry meets up with Molly Thatcher, (Lee Remick) and he goes completely bonkers and falls immediately in love with her. Molly fights off his advances and only accepts an invitation to dinner in order to sell Henry a business deal her boss, Bullard Bear, (Jim Backus) has assigned her. It is a deal to sell widgets from a company in New England and at the same time Henry wants to drill oil in a town near Boston, Mass. When Molly tells Henry she likes a painting, he buys her an art gallery and if she likes a fancy food establishment, he buys that for her. It is a very dumb comedy, but all the actors make it very enjoyable.

Wheeler Dealers is a very entertaining movie with Garner as a charming Texan who makes his money in shady deals and clever schemes, staying just this side of the law. Remick plays a stockbroker who is struggling to prove herself in a male dominated industry - it's one of these interesting examples of early feminism in movies; she is treated badly and is smart, but at the same time she basically ties her star to Garner (as do some men) rather than making her own way. Also note that in this period apparently even feminists referred to themselves as "girls." At times Wheeler Dealers approaches brilliance, with some great lines and a clever satire of finance on the highest levels, but unfortunately the movie is far too fond of sitcom-like plot twists and the ending feels rushed and unconvincing, as though the writers just ran out of ideas and decided to quickly dash something off. But the good outweighs the bad, and at its best this is a very funny movie, while at its worst it's still pretty cute.