KOTCH

I think her pedophile comment perhaps stems from a perception of changing social norms such as what is hurting Joe Biden. I don't think either Joe Biden or Joe Kotcher have motives that were meant to exploit or upset anybody. 

"Here, Matthau plays an elderly bachelor who adores children.

When I saw this movie in a theater, there were audible gasps from the audience during one scene where Kotch delivers a playful spank to a little girl in a bathing suit."

I guess New York was radically different than California in 1971. There were no gasps by audiences in the theater where I worked in Burlingame, nor should there have been. I saw this scene play out a few times with audiences. The way the scene is played it has already revealed to us what the nature of the character is like, one who simply loves kids like a grandpa. Some mothers who see his action in the wading pool take it differently but we as an audience already know he is just innocently comforting a crying little girl. His sports analogy about acceptable cultural norms when a complaint is filed satisfies the park official and his son, but not the mother of the girl.