See no evil, hear no evil: Fuzzy wuzzy was a woman???!

Ok to make up for some lost ground this month here is another post and its a moovie and for this I went back to the vaults of 1989 (well not literally!) and have chosen to do a review on the comedy film, See no evil, hear no evil starring one of the best American comedy duos of Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder.  So let's take a look.....

So the story begins as it is set in New York city with a blind man Wally Karew (Pryor) is looking for a job and he applies for one at a concession shop where he meets a deaf man, Dave Lyons (Wilder).  At first the two of them argue with one another given their conditions, however they soon put that aside and become friends.  Later after Wally is hired by Dave, they meet in a bar where they unintentionally start a fight when Dave stands on a belligerent man's jacket and Dave guides Wally and tells him when to punch the man by using clock directions.  After the fight they bond and share how they became deaf and blind and Dave confesses he has a terrible fear of making a fool of himself, but Wally says he can solves his problems in 10 seconds and dumps his ice cream cone on David's head.

One day, Wally who is now working at the concession store is waiting for the day's papers and a man walks into Dave's store and he buys for time when he sees a beatiful woman named Eve (Joan Severance) enter the building, he asks Dave to read the label on a box of antacid pills, and the man quickly puts a gold coin from his suitcase into a collection box of coins on the store counter.  Eve pulls a gun on the man and she threatens him saying he has to go with her and she wants the gold coin, the two of them struggle which results in Eve shooting the man dead and she takes his suitcase and leaves.  Dave naturally being deaf is unaware of the shooting and as he finishes reading the label he sees Eve's legs as she walks out of the building.  Wally having heard the gunshot wanders in and he falls over the man's body and Dave kneels by the body and picks up the gun, just as the police quickly arrive they are arrested and taken to the police station.

At the station they are interrogated by a cynical middle aged detective, Captain Braddock (Alan North) who takes an instant disliking to them and has them charged as the prime suspects.  Meanwhile Eve and her accomplice Kirgo (Kevin Spacey) hope to recover the missing coin turn up at the police station, posing as solicitors to allegedly release both men on bail.  However just after Eve and Kirgo leave, Dave recognises her legs and Wally recognises her perfume and then Dave twigs that she is the killer and he tries to tell Braddock who refuses to listen.  Wally then convinces Dave to escape from the police station and they do so in order to avoid being captured by Eve and Kirgo.  However Eve and Kirgo both soon catch up with them and as Eve phones her employer, Mr Sutherland (Anthony Zerbe) for instructions and with Dave's ability to lip read he catches what she is saying on the phone.  After Eve leaves the men, Wally knocks out Kirgo before he has a chance to kill them and Wally and Dave manage to escape in an unattended police car.  And between them they work the pedals and the steering wheel and they successfully evade the police and the criminals but they accidentally end up driving the car onto a rubbish barge which is moving out to sea.  Later on Wally and Dave ditch the police car and with the help of Wally's sister, Adele (Kirsten Childs) they set about to try and locate the killers so they can foil their activities and clear their names from the police.

While it wasn't a critical success on its release, for me See no evil, hear no evil is Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor's finest comedy and its where they best gelled together as a comedy duo.  And while the premise of the story is hardly original it does allow for a slightly different spin on things with the two protagonists both having visual and hearing impairments.  Wilder and Pryor's natural onscreen chemistry also works wonders and is what makes the film work so well and their characters are also oddly endearing as they are simply two guys who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Wilder and Pryor also nicely use the deaf and blind angle to create some really funny moments in the film that combine moments of misunderstanding, but at the same time they never patronise or in any way mock people with such impairments in their portrayals of Dave and Wally.  

Getting onto the performances things are pretty good with both the leads in excellent form, starting with Gene Wilder as the mild mannered and genial Dave Lyons, a deaf man who befriends Wally and from here his whole life is turned upside down.  Wilder has plenty of highlights in the film such as in the scene where Dave and Wally both first meet at the store and as Wally tells Dave that he is blind, Dave asks "Are you really blind?" and Wally snaps back "Yeah I'm really blind, what are you, fuckin deaf?!" and Dave yells "YES! I'M FUCKING DEAF!!".  Wilder's scene in the bar with Pryor is also funny when Dave guides Wally around when they fight an unruly man and Dave keeps giving out instructions on where to move and when to hit "Circle right, circle right!  Eight o'clock!  Ten!  Five to three! Oohh, I got confused!" and so on.  Wilder's funniest lines also include when he is at the station and Braddock asks him quickly "Alright no bullshit, was there or wasn't there a woman?!" and Dave asks if him if he is serious and Braddock replies "Yes I'm goddamn serious" and Dave says "Fuzzy wuzzy was a woman?!".  Another funny moment is when Dave and Wally are at the police station, a lab specialist enters the room and tells Braddock that both men had the "Men's Rhea" and as the man turns his back on him, Dave is left in horror thinking this is a sexually transmitted disease and he is dragged screaming out of the room "MEN'S RHEA!!! OH GOD NO!!!!".  Wilder also has another funny moment in the scene where Dave is repeatedly told to face the camera by a female police officer when taking their mug shots, but he keeps turning to Wally at the wrong moment and the police woman eventually goes off her nut screaming "shit" over and over.  And Dave asks Wally "Is she saying shit or ship??".  And probably my favourite moment of Wilder's is when Wally asks him if he can't hear even if he screams in his ear and Dave asks him to try it and afterwards Wally thinks its worked but Dave turns angrily to him and says "NO, SCHMUCK!!! I'M DEAF!! NOW D'YA GET IT???!!".

Richard Pryor is also great and he has numerous highlights as the blind man, Wally Karew, who ends up unwittingly getting himself and Dave into trouble with the killers.  Pryor pretty much get's all the best dialogue in the film and he delivers great lines such as in the scene when Eve grants a last request to both men and Wally asks "I suppose a fuck is out of the question?".  Another funny moment is where Wally and Dave make their getaway in a police car, with Wally at the wheel he turns to Dave at one point, who says "Don't look at me, keep your eyes on the road!" and Wally says "OK, if it'll make you feel better!".  And he also shares a nice moment with Wilder when they have driven the police car into a rubbish barge going out to sea and Dave says "Right now I'm overwhelmed by the STINK of the seven tonnes of garbage you drove us into!" and Wally replies "Is that what it is?!  I thought you let one go!".  Another one of my favourite scenes is where Wally poses a Swedish psychiatrist at a conference and they ask his thoughts on geriatric sexual practice and he says "Well some of my patients prefer walking, some of them prefer bicycling.  But for best results, to guarantee satisfaction, most of them like fucking!  You know poonta-poonta-poonta, I like it myself!  One in the morning and late at night!".  Also later on as Wally and Dave try to foil the criminals getaway, Wally dives onto Eve and as they struggle he grabs at her breasts in the process, and she yells "What do you think you are doing?!" and Wally replies "I don't know, I'm blind.  But this is what they tought us at Braille school, to just feel around and see what's happening!".  And later on as the whole business is resolved and Braddock arrives on the scene Wally smiles and says to him "Captain Braddock.  You're a dickhead!".  And lastly there is the scene where he is on the subway with his sister, Adele, and he attempts to read newspaper which is upside down and he sister says its ridiculous like he was trying to pass for being white and Wally suddenly jumps in alarm and says "You mean I'm not white???!  Does dad know???!".  

The supporting cast are also pretty good starting with Alan North who is hilarious as the cynical and weary Captain Braddock who has a short fuse and is convinced Dave and Wally are the guilty ones.  North's best moments come in his first scene where he interrogates Dave and Wally, and later on when he says to his second in command, Gatlin "Thirty two years on the force, a wife and three kids and a blind guy and a deaf guy are making me look like a complete asshole!" and Gatlin absent mindedly says "You got that right".  And lastly North's funniest moment is after Wally insults him at the end and he says to Gatlin who restrains him "Let me shoot em, I wanna shoot them!  Why can't I shoot them?!".  Joan Severance, who we've hardly heard from since is also quite good in her role as the seductive and deadly Eve and she has a rather good shower scene where Dave pretends he has a gun in his pocket (which is actually his erection!) and get's her to drop her towel and we see her very nice naps (although on the DVD they are out of shot! Boo! (perv!)).  Kevin Spacey also makes a noteworthy appearance as Kirgo, Eve's smarmy English accomplice, although it has to be said his English accent isn't that convincing!  But Spacey does have a funny moment after he is knocked out by Wally that he soon get's back up and he says "I hate it when that happens!".  And lastly Anthony Zerbe is also good in his role as the mastermind behind the criminal operation, Mr Sutherland, who as it turns out is also blind and he and Wally have a face off later on.

Getting onto the director, Arthur Hiller (who also directed a previous Pryor and Wilder film, Silver Streak) who does a fine job here with the pacing of the film and also keeps the tone nice and light throughout.  And the Stewart Copeland formerly of The Police also provides a fine, upbeat and jaunty music score, which is quite synth heavy but it still works pretty well and overall its quite catchy and it suits the comedic tone of the film perfectly.

So moving to flaws (yep this is always the same structure!) does See no evil, hear no evil have any worthy of mentioning???  Well it has to be said that the film's simple biggest weakness is its plot, which is very thin and it is hardly original, with two guys on the run from the police and the killers and are wanted for a murder they didn't committ, the only difference here being one is blind and the other deaf.  Its also pretty silly and far fetched to say the least that a blind man and a deaf man could escape the police, evade their captors and later on go on and foil the criminals.  I mean I'm sure that sort of thing would happen everyday!  And I'm not discriminating against anyone with visual or hearing impairments as I can hardly even imagine two people without these impairments do the same thing on their own.  But again it is just a film and you have to suspend disbelief for an hour and a half or so.  Another stupid aspect of the film is also why is the gold coin so valuable and in the end Mr Sutherland claims it is a superconductor of sorts which is very valuable, but it is hardly explained at all why it really is so useful!  In the end the whole gold coin thing is just a bit of a red herring and it feels like a last minute slapped on piece of scripting, which again highlights the flaws in the wafer thin plot.  And despite the good efforts of the cast, the supporting characters such as Eve, Kirgo and Sutherland are also pretty bland and one dimensional and as villains they are not really that effective, so in the end you don't really care that much whether or not they get their comeuppance, but we know its coming anyway.  

There is also the odd lapse in continuity as well as there are one or two moments in the film where you actually do get the impression that Dave can hear Wally, as there is one scene when Wally and Dave have just escaped the police and Dave leaves Wally behind briefly to check out for the police nearby and Wallys calls out his name and Dave turns back to him as if he actually heard him!  But for the most part both actors play out and deal with their parts of being deaf and blind really well despite that odd lapse now and then.   

So that all put aside, See no evil, hear no evil is still a very enjoyable comedy after 25 years, which is still as funny as it was when it was released and if you want a good laugh its definitely worth a shot.

And so I will depart and leave you there.