This movie feels like it has several entertaining directions it could go, and uses none of them. The cops plant a wire on Richard Pryor without his knowledge because he's going to meet with a loan shark. Since he agrees to deliver some diamonds in exchange for the loan, he gets arrested and sentenced to a year in jail. The loan shark doesn't believe he's an unwitting dupe, so here is the potential for a movie about Richard Pryor doing all sorts of crazy shit to avoid dying in prison.
But no, he fakes being crazy at his sentencing, which buys him three weeks evaluation at a hospital run by a penny-pinching, buck-passing administrator (played by Joe Mantegna). Pryor does befriend the others in the psych ward and one of the orderlies, but the doctor isn't fooled and he's about to be sent on to prison.
Then a hurricane hits New York, and the orderly encourages Pryor to steal his file from the Mantegna's office and flee. Except he's spotted by the weekend administrator, and mistaken for a doctor meant to be working in the ER that weekend. He can't escape because the rising water has taken out the causeway, so he has to pretend to be a doctor. Cue lots of scenes of his doing his best to avoid doing actual medicine (at least some common sense), while winning people over left and right. Some of the bits are funny, like the one with the helicopter, or Pryor helping the lady who is really sad because her boyfriend broke up with her. The one doctor constantly bringing up malpractice and the possibility of them getting sued is exhausting.
There's also an injured criminal running loose. It would have been so easy for the injured crook to be someone sent by the loan shark to get Pryor, in case he convinced the docs he was crazy. They couldn't even bother with that. And Mantegna's been taken hostage by the psych ward patients, but I'm not sure that plotline goes anywhere. I guess it's a way for Mantegna to be there while the causeway is still out, so Pryor can show he's a good guy by sticking up for the hospital staff, and then the staff can stick up for him. But the movie ends with Pryor being given his file and just sort of taking off, so do you really need Mantegna around for that?
I can't decide whether Pryor's character is a shrewd businessman who can't get a loan from a bank because of racism, or if he's kind of an idiot. His lawyer mentions Pryor convinced him to put up 5 grand of his own money for a 'offshore shopping mall', which sounds stupid. But maybe Pryor just needed a couple decades, until the Internet was more of a thing. But he wanted the 50 grand for a cineplex with 32 screens, with only 18 seats per theater. Can you do enough showings of a movie to make anything off it with that few seats?
6 comments:
For reasons I can't explain, I watched this film a lot as a kid. It was probably one of the only videos we had in the house or something.
Anyway, I remembered it being a fun comedy about a pretend doctor giving Life Savers to everyone, although we don't have Life Savers here so I never had a clear idea what they were.
I watched not long ago, it for the first time in maybe 30 years, and wow, what an odd film. The tone is all over the place. Is it a comedy? Is it an action movie? Is it a disaster film? I wasn't surprised to discover that it had a troubled production.
I haven't seen a lot of Pryor's movies. Probably Brewster's Miilions at some point, and that one where he and Gene Wilder are on the run together. I wonder if Pryor's style of comedy was hard to capture in a movie, versus doing stand-up? But yeah, it's a weirdly put together film.
Also, Life Savers are nothing great, so you aren't missing much there.
I just sort of accepted that it was funny when I was a child. Only watching it as an adult did I realise that there is almost no aspect of the situation that lends itself to comedy.
I laughed at the whole situation with using the helicopter for ventilation. Especially the perfectly shaped outline of the copter in the doorway. That cracked me up for some reason.
My understanding is that it was supposed to be a serious film, and Pryor was looking forward to a proper dramatic role, but the studio forced changes to turn it into a comedy because Pryor was in it. That would explain why the tone is all over the place.
It definitely would, although I'm trying to picture Pryor playing a serious dramatic role and I can't get there.
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