Stir Crazy

I'm still working my way through the bunch of movies I recorded during the Black Experience in Film series that TCM ran back in September. This time, I've gotten up to Stir Crazy.

Richard Pryor plays Harry, who at the start of the movie is working as a server in a catering firm, catering a hoity-toity luncheon in Manhattan. However, he's been dumb enough to bring his stash of marijuana with him, this being 1980 and long before even medical marijuana was legalized. (Why he didn't just leave it at home, I don't know.) But of course it gets noticed and mistaken by his chef boss for oregano (she wouldn't bring her own ingredients?), and uses it in the food she's cooking for the guests. It gets Harry fired.

Gene Wilder plays Skip, a struggling playwright who is making ends meet by working department store security. He makes the mistake of accusing the wrong person of shoplifting, and this gets him fired too. Now, Harry and Skip are best friends, and when they discuss their having lost their jobs, Skip comes up with the brilliant idea of going west to California to make it out there, this again being the time when white people looking to improve their lives were still going to California instead leaving to go to other states.

Anyhow, the two friends are short of money while they're traveling west, so Skip gets them a job "in banking". What they really are are actors doing promotional work for the local bank in Glenboro (Tucson, AZ is used for the growing Glenboro), dressing up as woodpeckers and singing a jingle to entice customers or something. (Why they're doing it inside the bank, I don't get.) But they're an easy mark for bad guys who decide to rob the bank dressed up in identical woodpecker costumes, which obviously makes Skip and Harry the prime suspects. Sure enough, Skip and Harry are arrested and put in prison.

Neither of them knows the first thing about prison, although Skip is obviously far worse off as he's Woody Allen-level neurotic. Harry tries his best to deal with a bad situation and also make things easier for his best friend, but there's not much that can be done as a prisoner.

That is, until the warden (Barry Corbin) tests all the new prisoners on the mechanical bull to see if any of them would be useful in the prison rodeo. Somehow, Skip is perfect for it. Taking part in the rodeo could bring Skip privileges, but it could also get Skip seen as a brown-noser by the other prisoners. But there's one other possibility, which is escaping from the arena where the rodeo is going to be held.

There's a lot to like about Stir Crazy, although in the final analysis I'd also have to say that I preferred their earlier pairing in Silver Streak to this one. Wilder is just a bit too manic here, and I found a few too many plot holes. Also, I really liked the supporting cast of Silver Streak who actually had a lot to do, to the nondescript supporting actors in Stir Crazy.

It's not that Stir Crazy is a bad movie by any means. There are a lot of laughs to be had, and it's always good to see Pryor and Wilder together. It's just that I preferred Silver Streak. Sadly, Silver Streak seems to have fallen out of print on DVD, so if you want to judge between the two, you'll have to go the streaming route. Stir Crazy is available in multiple releases.