I saw a film!

The twin talents of these brilliant comic actors could not have been more squandered. Not only is the premise a particularly hokey one, but most of the events require our deaf and blind protagonists to somehow always be turned away or otherwise distracted, despite their disadvantages. In other words, it seems more likely a lip-reading newspaper peddler in a big city would never take his eyes off of you. But, to pull jokes from the unlikely duo’s teaming up so that they could solve a murder that happened right in front of them, and the object of the murder left in their care, is just loutish. To top it off the Pryor character, who is blind, unconscionably insists on independence and being treated as though he were not handicapped, which leads to further hijinks, rather damning any sort of real-life devotion to this sort of independence. Of course, most of the jokes come from him tossing away his tools of aid, and then walking into the back of a box truck. When we’re at the point of justifying laughing at blindness I start to feel a bit of indignation bile rising. Yes its’ supposed to be a comedy. No we’re not supposed to be taking this nonsense seriously. We’re looking at Wilder and Pryor and we’re only groaning, which is very sad.

It’s a lazy story. The fellows are shoved together on the the flimsiest of pretense. Joan Severance from the Black Scorpion franchise is the killer, teamed up with the late (just kidding) Kevin Spacey in a comic baddie role. Few of the set-ups feel at all natural and they’re not funny enough to be this contrived.

There have always been these sorts of “on the run” type films, and they seldom satisfy, but adding the cornball conflicts of each of them requiring the other’s abilities doesn’t end up saving this floundering ship, it only winds up creating some lame jokes. I’m not happy to say this, I love both these comic actors, I just feel like they’ve been terribly wasted on this project.

This is running free on Prime (usa).