Year: 1980
Director: Sidney Poitier
Genre: Comedy
Rating: 
“Stir Crazy is a comedy classic, and reminds us all of the great comedy team of the late Richard Pryor and brilliant Gene Wilder“
Two of the comedy greats pair up again for my favorite of there collaborations, Gene Wilder who plays Skip Donahue an amateur playwright but works a day job in department store as security and Richard Pryor who plays Harry Monroe who works as a catering assistant. The story starts off with both Skip and Harry getting fired, Skip for for harassing a woman who he accuses of stealing in the most ridiculous way and Harry is fired because his personal stash of Africa’s finest weed ends up in the food at a society dinner on the same day. Skip and Harry take the opportunity to leave New York and head out West. Unfortunately for them they manage to get framed for a robbery whilst working part time in a bank along there way.
As I said this is my favorite performances by Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, while both have had plenty of top performances close to Stir Crazy but neither have had any that were better.
There is no one better at playing an eccentric character like Skip than Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor plays off of Wilder’s characters energy so well throughout this. The two are at there best in the movie when they are first taken to prison to start there 125 year sentence, where Harry decides to do a sort of chicken walk trying to look “mean” and “bad” so as they wont get beaten in prison. But my ultimate moment in this film is where they are just about to be put into there cell and Skip freaks out and starts to jump all over the prison guard. This is wilder at his best acting crazy and this scene alone is worth seeing the movie for. Check out the scene below.
Stir Crazy is a comedy classic, and reminds us all of the great comedy team of the late Richard Pryor and brilliant Gene Wilder, it’s almost as if they were made to work together.
