Stir Crazy
Year: | 1980 |
Studio: | Columbia |
Director: | Sidney Poitier |
Writer: | Bruce Jay Friedman |
Cast: | Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, JoBeth Williams, Craig T Nelson, Barry Corbin |
There was a time Wilder and Pryor were as comfortable and natural together in a string of movies as Laurel and Hardy, the difference being that they were both the comic foil and neither the straight man of the duo.
With delusions much grander than their stations, they play two unintelligent friends framed with a bank robbery and get sent to a prison deep in redneck country.
Once there, they're too stupid to realise the brutality of the abuse and mistreatment they're suffering before Harry's (Wilder) natural talent for bull riding gives the warden an idea to put the prison on the map - a rodeo that might be Harry and Skip's (Pryor) ticket out.
Very much a product of its time, and as comfortable and familiar as slippers.