Uptown Saturday Night (1974)

Directed by Sidney Poitier. Starring Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, Harry Belafonte, Rosalind Cash, Calvin Lockhart, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, Roscoe Lee Browne, Paula Kelly, Lee Chamberlin. [PG]

Slapdash comedy is the first of three pairings of Poitier and Cosby; plot loosely revolves around the stars’ search for a winning lottery ticket that was in Poitier’s wallet when he was robbed by crooks at an underground nightclub. Poitier’s direction and mostly “straight man” performance are both adequate, if a little stiff. Cosby fares better as his devil-may-care pal, and a barely-recognizable Belafonte gets a few laughs looking and talking like Don Corleone from The Godfather. Considerable comic talent can be found in small roles (Pryor as a con man, Wilson as a showboat preacher, etc.), with the funniest scene reserved for Browne as a congressman who flips the Nixon portrait in his office for that of Malcolm X when greeting his black constituents. Richard Wesley’s script is too thin and inconsistent for the pic to ever take off, but it’s satisfactory enough to stay out all night with it. Title tune sung by Dobie Gray.

64/100