See No Evil, Hear No Evil

Wally Karue (Richard Pryor) is blind and he doesn't like it. Dave Lyons (Gene Wilder) is deaf, and runs a newspaper stand. Wally gets a job from Dave, and quickly becomes fast friends. One day, a man comes in. After an argument with Eve (Joan Severance), she kills him. Both Wally and Dave only partly witness the incident. The incompetent police arrests the duo but then they escape. Eve and Kirgo (Kevin Spacey) are after the duo for a valuable coin.

Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder are always fun together. The gimmick allows the guys to have some hilarious back and forth. The mug shot scene was gut busting funny. While the joking around is funny, the caper doesn't work as well. In the end, the movie works as an excuse for the guys to go crazy.

In the final Gene Wilder-Richard Pryor pairing, they play a deaf man and a blind man who jointly witness a murder. Most of the humor comes from their schemes to prove their innocence, but probably the best scene is Pryor impersonates a doctor. How gullible can people be?! Also appearing is a young Kevin Spacey as one of the criminals. He and Joan Severance make the perfect criminal pair.

OK, so "See No Evil, Hear No Evil" isn't exactly laugh-out-loud humor like "Silver Streak" and "Stir Crazy" were, but there's no shortage of laughs anywhere in it. I certainly enjoyed it. Also starring Alan North, Anthony Zerbe, Louis Giambalvo and Kirsten Childs.

I love this movie and I love Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. On the face of it they're both so utterly unfunny that they come full circle on the crapometer right back round to funny. You have to hand it to them. These guys have made several films together, all of which are arguably quite rubbish, yet I always wizz myself laughing whenever I watch any of them. By the way, for all you Wilder/Pryor slapstick-duo film fan freaks out there, I stole that amazingly funny quote in my summary from the back of the Stir Crazy box. So sue me if I want to use the best line I've ever read on the back of a video box ever, anywhere in the whole wide world. You know, you should always judge a film by it's cover, and even more so by the description on the back. How could you not fall over, doubled-up in uncontrollable fits of laughter, face contorting, body spasming in the video store when you see Pryor/Wilder on the front cover of a video, one pretending he can't see, the other pretending he can't hear. Then you read the back cover and you nearly die laughing before you reach the counter due to the over-use of words such as, crazy, zany, nuts, wacko, crackers, mad-cap, caper, loony, escapades, hilarious, romp etc. etc. I mean, if you've ever seen this film, you'll know what a total load of lies that is, but they're real funny lies. All this and you have not even left the video store. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but any film that has normal, well adjusted members of the film watching community thrashing about on the floor of a video store, really should have cleaned up at the oscars. Ok, so I exaggerate. Or do I. Come on then. Lets hear some Pryor/ Wilder collaboration appreciation.

This pairing of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, while not "Silver Streak" and not the first half of "Stir Crazy", is still an amusing comedy with some absolutely hilarious moments. I mean, let's face it...the second half of Stir Crazy is as boring as it gets. This film lags in spots, but the chemistry of Pryor and Wilder does satisfy. Stay away from "Another You" (as I did). I figured that this film was as good as we were going to get from Pryor and Wilder. Was I right? I dunno. I stayed away from "Another You".

I remember first seeing this movie when I was about five years old, and I found it hilarious. I caught the movie a couple more times on network TV, but this is the first time I watched it again in its unedited form.

Needless to say, Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder are both wonderful talents with an irreplacable chemistry, and that chemistry is utilized very well throughout. Of course, the brilliantly original premise helps as well. A blind guy and a deaf guy who pair up to solve a murder? Classic! That premise is used wonderfully. There's a great line where they're interrogated and angry officer screams out, "Between the two of you, you saw and heard everything!"

There's a lot of great fish-out-of-water humor involving Pryor's blindness and Wilder's deafness. One of the most hilarious gags, along with the car chase, is when Pryor helps another blind man to walk across the street, and they end up in the back of a truck. Now that's a literal example of the blind leading the blind. Each gag is delivered and timed very well, thanks for the great actors and veteran director Arthur Hiller, who has directed the two leads before in "Silver Streak."

This isn't a perfect comedy. A few gags fall flat, but the key word is "few." Some reviewers and audiences have regarded this as the low point in Wilder's and Pryor's careers. I think of "Another You" as the low point, which is a horribly forgettable comedy that unfortunately was the last film they did together.

A good deal of the gags are far-fetched, but this is a slapstick farce and you have to expect that. That's why I always say that this is a very tricky sub-genre and if not done correctly, the audience will totally stop suspending disbelief and simply scoff at its foolishness.

Fans of Pryor and Wilder should not be disappointed. Also, if you want to see an early (comic) performance by Kevin Spacey, it's also worth checking out. Speaking of worth checking out, Joan Severance provides great eye candy, and she has a couple of nude scenes to boot. I was born in 1982, so this was the first movie where I saw the two comics together on screen, so "See No Evil" is more unique to me than it probably is to others. But come on! With scenes like a high-speed car chase involving a blind man and a deaf man trying to escape, how can this not be regarded as a "unique" comedy?

My score: 7 (out of 10)