Rating: 
Summary: Snore crazy
Review: Usually I can tell a movie's going to be exceptionally bad during its opening seconds. Sure enough, not even one minute into STIR CRAZY, I smelled a bomb about to drop.Call Sidney Poitier, the director of STIR CRAZY, "Mister Tibbs," but don't call him a good filmmaker. Maybe he settled for this B-movie material just for the chance to direct. Did Sidney think comic actors Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor would improvise enough to make STIR CRAZY at least somewhat funny? If he did, he was very wrong. STIR CRAZY's plot is more a premise than a story. Wilder and Pryor get framed for bank robbery and must survive prison while their attorney tries to free them on appeal. Scenes cut away only half-finished. Characters wander in and out for either no reason (the women at the restaurant) or to return for a different reason (the gay inmate and psychotic inmate). Supposedly a comedy "team," Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor appear mostly in separate scenes in STIR CRAZY. Maybe the comic actors could not bear to watch each other sink in one unfunny gag after another. STIR CRAZY would not be the last nail in Gene Wilder's film career hammered by Sidney Poitier. A few years later Poitier "directed" Wilder in another awful attempt at comedy, HANKY PANKY. Later on Richard Pryor was back on board with Wilder for the wretched comedy SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, which exploited the beautiful Joan Sevarance but not any of Pryor's or Wilder's comic abilities. Not directed by Poitier this time, SEE NO COMEDY, HEAR NO LAUGHTER finally sent the Wilder-Pryor team to its Hollywood grave. What is funny: these guys cracked us up so much elsewhere, but not together.
Rating:
Summary: Snore crazy
Review: Usually I can tell a movie's going to be exceptionally bad during its opening seconds. Sure enough, not even one minute into STIR CRAZY, I smelled a bomb about to drop. Call Sidney Poitier, the director of STIR CRAZY, "Mister Tibbs," but don't call him a good filmmaker. Maybe he settled for this B-movie material just for the chance to direct. Did Sidney think comic actors Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor would improvise enough to make STIR CRAZY at least somewhat funny? If he did, he was very wrong. STIR CRAZY's plot is more a premise than a story. Wilder and Pryor get framed for bank robbery and must survive prison while their attorney tries to free them on appeal. Scenes cut away only half-finished. Characters wander in and out for either no reason (the women at the restaurant) or to return for a different reason (the gay inmate and psychotic inmate). Supposedly a comedy "team," Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor appear mostly in separate scenes in STIR CRAZY. Maybe the comic actors could not bear to watch each other sink in one unfunny gag after another. STIR CRAZY would not be the last nail in Gene Wilder's film career hammered by Sidney Poitier. A few years later Poitier "directed" Wilder in another awful attempt at comedy, HANKY PANKY. Later on Richard Pryor was back on board with Wilder for the wretched comedy SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, which exploited the beautiful Joan Sevarance but not any of Pryor's or Wilder's comic abilities. Not directed by Poitier this time, SEE NO COMEDY, HEAR NO LAUGHTER finally sent the Wilder-Pryor team to its Hollywood grave. What is funny: these guys cracked us up so much elsewhere, but not together.
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