Bustin Loose

I'll start my first ever review on here with a confession.



When Richard Pryor died, I was in tears. I utterly adored him, he was by some way my favorite comedian. The stand up he does blows all of today's comics out of the water and the only to even remotely approach him is Frankie Boyle.



Now that I have that off my chest, let's get into the meat of the reason for this blog, reviewing my film collection.




I haven't seen this particular part of Pryor's work for many years, so in effect it's a new-ish film to me. The first thing to note is that it is not a comedy as such, certainly not like Stir Crazy for example.



Pryor plays Joe, an ex con who gets roped into driving a bus full of troubled kids from their children's home in Philadelphia to a farm owned by their social worker in Washington. And yes, the plot really is as hackneyed as it sounds and every bit as cloying as it implies. Along the way, the hard bitten but essentially lovable rogue gradually falls for the kids and their social worker.


Along the way the gang get into some scrapes but get out of them with wearing predictability. On one memorable occasion, with the bus bogged down in mud somewhere in Iowa, Pryor dismounts and comes back with KKK members who push the bus out of the mire! I don't mind stretching incredulity watching a film but that takes the piss!

When they finally reach the farm, it seems that it's not owned by the social workers parents but by the social worker herself, played by Cicely Tyson who is so wooden I'm shocked she wasn't made into a cabinet. Of course, Pryor tries to save the day with a harebrained scheme involving stealing money from a hoodlum but the kids come through by stealing the bank managers car and then returning it to said bank manager who is so grateful he hands over $15000. The film ends with some astonishingly contrived claptrap between Pryor and the kids as they face their issues. In fact i would go so far as to say the whole final 30 minutes is unnecessary and feels tacked on.


The kids incidentally are the best thing in this movie by a country mile. The storyline is hackneyed, the 'acting' by everyone bar the aforementioned kids is awful and there are plot holes big enough to get the bus through. Some characters don't get enough screen time and others get too much. The jokes, such as they are, just about qualify as amusing but to me, this where the film falls down. It seems like the directors, Oz Scott and Michael Schultz couldn't decide if they wanted to make a family comedy, a straight comedy , a kids movie, or a drama. In the end they've got a melange of genres that doesn't quite work.