A fascinating memento of the zeitgeist of the early eighties, made when Ronald Reagan was running for President and released after his inauguration declaring that government was the problem and taxes were evil (a mindset that has remained the received wisdom for the past forty years and is one reason the richest nation on earth was so woefully unprepared for the current coronavirus pandemic). Yet when one of the characters collapses in court it's paramedics paid out of tax dollars that are called in to aid the stricken victim.
The film has been compared to Capra, and while Geraldine Page's crazy old aunt (and her eccentric family) are far weirder than Lionel Barrymore's brood in 'You Can't It With You', it uses Capra's device of giving the task of stating the case for taxation to shifty-looking spokesmen (in Capra's film hawk-faced Charles Lane, in 'Harry's War' a smarmy David Ogden Stiers) easily rebutted by an Everyman figure (here ironically named 'Johnson' like the great reforming president of the sixties) declaring that "Hitler would've loved the IRS" rather than the cold-eyed plutocrats that are the real winners when taxes are low.
The film has been compared to Capra, and while Geraldine Page's crazy old aunt (and her eccentric family) are far weirder than Lionel Barrymore's brood in 'You Can't It With You', it uses Capra's device of giving the task of stating the case for taxation to shifty-looking spokesmen (in Capra's film hawk-faced Charles Lane, in 'Harry's War' a smarmy David Ogden Stiers) easily rebutted by an Everyman figure (here ironically named 'Johnson' like the great reforming president of the sixties) declaring that "Hitler would've loved the IRS" rather than the cold-eyed plutocrats that are the real winners when taxes are low.