Uptown Saturday Night

Uptown Saturday Night (1974)

Runtime: 104 minutes

Directed by: Sidney Poitier

Starring: Poitier, Bill Cosby, Harry Belafonte, Calvin Lockhart, Flip Wilson

From: Warner Bros.

This is a revisit and I am glad I still think the movie is good, despite the presence of Old Bill as one of the two leads: 

After what happened on Sunday night, watching Black Cinema did not seem like a bad idea, even if one of the two stars of this film is disgraced due to the recent revelations of decades-long repugnant behavior. I had seen this many years ago yet barely remembered it so even though one of the stars was Bill Cosby, I gave this another spin.

The setting is Chicago & best buddies are the pairing of Cosby and Sidney Poitier, who also directed this film. They are working-class folk who bluff their way into a swanky club that has illegal gambling; well, a robbery occurs and Sidney loses his wallet, which is especially bad when he realizes that contains a winning lottery ticket, so it's a comedy of errors trying to track it down as they come across wacky characters, usually played by famous faces. There is Flip Wilson as a preacher, Roscoe Lee Browne as a senator who is happy to pander to his constituents by pretending to be Afrocentric when convenient, and Richard Pryor as a gumshoe detective.

In more substantial roles are rival gangsters played by Calvin Lockhart and Harry Belafonte; the latter does a Don Corleone impression and has the immortal character name of GEECHIE DAN BEAUFORD. The film is silly but at least it's fun as their problems spiral out of control the further they get into their investigation and the addition of more and more people. To be frank, only the opening credits say that the movie is in Chicago; obviously it is filmed in Los Angeles and when the final act occurs and they are outdoors in the same California park that served as the location for the opening of Slaughter's Big Rip-Off... there are no hills like that in Illinois; trust me I know.

As long as you don't boycott Cosby's movies due what we know of him as a human being-I don't fault anyone for that stance-then this is an amusing way to spend a random night or a rainy afternoon. I mean, this has everything from a sack race and Poitier doing The Dozens to an epic shoot-em-up and gospel music.