It’s easy to dismiss the picaresque action comedy “Fool’s Parade” as an “old man movie,” because that was kind of the idea back when it was made.

James Stewart was 63 in 1971, when it came out, with a bunch of 50ish co-stars and a 50something director whose best years were behind him. That was “old” in 1971, before “60 is the new 40” got any traction.

And Stewart, his fellow Oscar winners George Kennedy and Anne Baxter (“All About Eve”), William Windom and Strother Martin had been fixtures on the screen for decades upon decades when they filmed this 1930s period piece.

This tale of a convict trying to cash his big, fat, prison labor money check when he gets out in the middle of the Great Depression is emblematic of the Hollywood of 1971. The studios leaned on older stars and their older filmgoer fans because they didn’t know what to put on screen that would pull in new generations. The Youth Movement that ushered in both the glorious, artisistic high water mark films and also the business-redefining blockbusters of the ’70s were a couple of years from taking over.

So studios leaned on old reliables like John Wayne, Stewart and others of that generation, even if their fans no longer went to the movies. Newman, Redford, Streisand and Poitier and Garner and McQueen could only manage a film a year. And Elvis was finished.

What’s surprising, dipping into this lightly-regarded, timeworn and formulaic Depression Era “Western” in a different setting is how funny it still plays. Sure, it creaks and wheezes and groans like a Ford Model A on a backwater dirt road. But reliable players who remembered the sentiments, mores and attitudes of that bygone era and who knew where the laughs were deliver, time and again.

The sight of Martin, Kennedy and Windom sweating, grimacing and grinning, and Stewart scrambling, ducking and rowing, sputtering and fuming for the last time in a star vehicle can be a nostalgic delight.

Stewart plays aged Mattie Appleyard, one of three convicts released from the state penitentiary in Glory, W.Va. the same day in 1935. Lee (Martin) was a bank robber, and Johnny (Kurt Russell) a local kid convicted of sexual assault. Appleyard did the most time — 40 years — for killing a couple of men.

It is his paycheck from his years of barely-paid prison labor that they’re all relying on to open a general store somewhere. The $25,428.32 Mattie has coming to him will set them all up.

But everything about the sinister guard, Capt. Council (Kennedy) tells them they won’t live to collect that cash. He may croon “Shall We Gather at the River,” like the Sunday school teacher that he is as he escorts them to town. But the threats about the train they’d damned well better board and the return to Glory they’d best not even think about give us, and the soon-to-be-ex-convicts, the willies.

Council’s “See you before tomorrow’s sunrise” is a straight-up threat.

Because “all that money leaving town” vexes the broke locals. The smirking fat cat banker (David Huddleston) is the only one who doesn’t seem concerned. He knows what’s coming. He arranged it.

The threats seem to come from every corner on that short train ride, as Lee is given to over-sharing their business and finances and one tipsy passenger (Windom) seems entirely too interested. But threats or not, “fear of God” Council be damned, they have to get back to Glory.

The narrative staggers into and out of town as cagey Mattie strains to find a way to cash that check that won’t get them robbed, killed or locked back up. A handy hooker (Baxter) may intervene. When the guys after you have guns, sometimes only dynamite will get their attention.

And wouldn’t you know it, the kid’s best friend “inside” — the prison’s bloodhound — is forever tripping them up as they try to just be regular, returned-to-society citizens attempting to cash a check that will secure their futures in the middle of a Depression.

Running gags include the sad-eyed but persistent hound, Mattie’s “all seeing” prophetic glass eye and the general sweatiness of old men on the run or in the chase.

Hunting them to rob and kill the three is OK, so long as they’re not church goers.

“You’uns is aetheists?”

Director McLaglen, no stranger to “old guys” action pics (“Hellfighters,” “Th Undefeated,” “The Wild Geese”) uses Moundsville, West Virginia locations to good effect in this shaggy (hound) dog comedy. His lone special effect? The cast.

Russell more or less holds his own, midway between his Disney years and the adult career that really took off after a late ’70s TV movie turn playing Elvis. Baxter vamps it up and seems to enjoy herself in the process — caked with makeup, weighed down with extra large eyelashes.

Character actor typecasting ensures Windom and Martin get their predictable moments and chuckles.

Kennedy squints and sweats and shows off stained, metal-braced teeth as Council dirties one pair of spotless white sneakers after another in his pursuit, a man of twisted theology and a ready, philosophical excuse when things don’t go according to play.

“Who can foresee the unforseen?”

But Stewart sets the tone, by turns playful and mischievous, twinkly and ornery as this righteous and just plain muleheaded sage. He gets to utter the script’s pithiest line, an aphorism for the anti-fat-cat/”Religion is the opiate of the masses” 1930s that resonated in ’71 and rings even truer today.

“God uses the good ones,” Mattie intones. “The bad ones use God.”

Rating: PG, violence, mild profanity

Cast: James Stewart, George Kennedy, Anne Baxter, Kurt Russell, David Huddleston, William Windom and Strother Martin.

Credits: Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, scripted by James Lee Barrett, based on a novel by Davis Grubb. A Columbia Pictures release on Tubi, other streamers.

Running time: 1:38