Asking someone of George Burns' advanced years to single-handedly carry a picture like Just You and Me, Kid must be considered some form of elder abuse. Not that Burns was incapable or not up to the task. He proves in practically every frame of Kid that he was still capable of producing his own strange, peculiar brand of charm in abundance, and that what he didn't know about timing simply wasn't worth knowing. But the sad fact is that he -- and the viewing audience -- would have been better off if the makers of this film had simply turned the camera on and asked Burns to improvise, all on his own, for an hour and a half or so. Instead, they made the mistake of asking him to speak the lines that Leonard B. Stern and Oliver Hailey had fashioned for him, to pretend to tolerate the tired story they had concocted and to pretend that his co-star Brooke Shields had something to offer beyond her well-documented stunning looks. Kid's screenplay is woefully poor, lacking almost entirely in humor and populated with characters that are almost all a bore. Burns survives all this beautifully, but Shields sinks -- as indeed would almost anyone asked to play her role. The supporting cast does include some wonderful fellow old timers; they do well enough, but the likes pf Ray Bolger and Burl Ives deserve better.