Standard & Poor

The Wheeler Dealers provides the dreariest view of Wall Street since the crash of '29. Billed as satire, it opens bullish, closes bearish, but mostly just bumbles along with a portfolio full of otiose gags about Texas, the sexes (at least three), and stockbrokers--with the brokers depicted as a shifty lot who spend their time peddling worthless securities to unsuspecting clients. The plot has something to do with a young speculator who arrives in Manhattan from Texas, buys the first taxicab he climbs into, snaps up a swank restaurant because his date likes to eat there, impulsively flies to Europe and hops right back with a grand collection of German expressionist art, finally shakes up the entire U.S. economy by promoting a more or less mythical company known as Universal Widget. Why? Why, because he is plumb crazy about a shapely security analyst, Lee Remick. Why else?

Saddled with dialogue that often seems as flat as a list of over-the-counter quotations, Actress Remick and Leading Man James Garner almost save the day. Garner, who used to be TV's Maverick, has an easy comedy style that departs from the current vogue for hard-breathers. His approach to sex is sidelong--frank, half-innocent curiosity mixed with a twinkling suspicion that the whole durn thing might be some kind of a trick. To help Garner feel at home off the range, Remick comes on as a clotheshorse. Though her head is supposedly full of Universal Widget, she wears Norman Norell originals and talks ersatz girl-talk with a plain little roommate in a plush little flat that looks as though Doris Day had just moved out of it. Everything is untouched.

Among the supporting players, Louis Nye earns laughs as a bearded, way-out artist with an eye for the fast buck. "My stuff goes for 500 clams, but it's got a 1,000% profit potential," he says. Nye rides around on his latest masterwork aboard a kid's tricycle with a dribbling container of paint suspended over each wheel. Nye tells a visitor: "If you're going to walk on my canvas, the least you can do is put a little crimson on your soles." Pretty funny. But when all's said and done, The Wheeler Dealers sells everyone short.

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