It’s the ultimate nonblockbuster movie pitch: Death-obsessed rich boy meets lively, octogenarian kleptomaniac, who steals his heart. No joke — it’s a cult classic: 1971’s “Harold and Maude.”
Unspooling against Cat Stevens’ honeyed folk-rock score, it made stars of director Hal Ashby and screenwriter Colin Higgins — and icons of its May/December couple, played by Bud Cort and that uber-cougar, Ruth Gordon.
Nevertheless, the film got a fat thumb’s down from Roger Ebert and other critics, including one who called it “as funny as a burning orphanage.” this, despite some of the funniest fake suicides in screen history, including a hanging, drowning and immolation — anything Harold could do to get a rise out of his preternaturally self-possessed mom.