7 | / 10 |
Users | 3.7 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A blind man and a deaf man are mistakenly accused of murder and must work together to find the real killers.
Starring: Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder, Kevin Spacey, Joan Severance, Anthony ZerbeComedy | 100% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: LPCM 2.0
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
After the success of Stir Crazy, Columbia/TriStar urgently wanted to reteam Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in another comedy, but a host of personal factors got in the way. Even a partial list reads like a soap opera. There was Pryor's 1980 self-immolation while freebasing cocaine; his subsequent recovery from drug addiction, only to be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis; Wilder's marriage to Gilda Radner, with whom he made three films; and their repeated unsuccessful attempts to start a family, followed by Radner's diagnosis with ovarian cancer. It was during an apparent remission from Radner's cancer that Wilder and Pryor reunited with their Silver Streak director, Arthur Hiller, to shoot See No Evil, Hear No Evil. Wilder had insisted on script participation, and he shared the credit with five other writers. But viewers expecting another Stir Crazy were disappointed. The two stars still had undeniable onscreen chemistry, but they'd become different people in the intervening nine years. The film itself lacked the loose, improvisational style that Stir Crazy's "fish out of water" format and road trip story allowed. Instead, it relied on intricately choreographed physical comedy and, in one instance, a film-length conceptual gag with a delayed pay-off (I'm being vague on purpose for those who haven't yet seen it). Contemporary critics were harsh, but See No Evil, Hear No Evil has aged well precisely because physical gags are timeless (which is why Chaplin and Keaton still make us laugh). To the credit of the writers and the performers, the routines are funny even though many of them depend on Pryor's character being blind and Wilder's being deaf. Pryor and Wilder are so good that they never seem to be making fun of the disabilities. Instead, they use the disabilities to make fun of everyone else (including each other).
Image completes its recent trilogy of Richard Pryor releases (the other two being The Toy and Stir Crazy) with a respectable 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray that brings out all the detail in cinematographer Victor Kemper's imagery. Kemper, whose credits include Dog Day Afternoon and Eyes of Laura Mars, knows a thing or two about shooting a bustling cityscape, and he uses locations like Union Square, Tribeca, the Westside Highway and the Hudson River to great advantage. People often debate whether comedies are worth upgrading to Blu-ray; regardless of where one stands on the issue, when a film includes scenery like this, the question isn't even close. Detail in everything from Dave's newsstand products to Eve's lacey undergarments is well-rendered. Black levels and contrast are appropriate, and colors are well-delineated and properly saturated. Film grain is visible but not intrusive, and the grain pattern appears natural and undisturbed by digital manipulation. I saw no indication of high frequency filtering or artificial sharpening, nor were any compression artifacts visible.
The film's original stereo soundtrack is presented as PCM 2.0. The left and right separations are distinct from the opening bars of the lively score by Stewart Copeland, but there is no surround activity to speak of, even when the track is played through a decoding system such as DPL IIx. Voices sound natural, and the dialogue is always clear.
I don't have Sony's 2001 DVD release of See No Evil, Hear No Evil for comparison, but informed sources report that the disc included the film's theatrical trailer, along with trailers for Money Train, Bad Boys and Blue Streak. The Blu-ray, however, contains no extras.
The film in which Pryor and Wilder first teamed, Silver Streak, is probably the one that fans most want to see on Blu-ray, but it's a Fox property, and who knows when it'll see the light of day? Meanwhile, Sony controls the rights to two of Pryor's peerless standup films, Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip and Richard Pryor . . . Here and Now, which would make a terrific double-feature Blu-ray. Pryor was a brilliant and subtle actor, but no film role ever fully tapped his restless genius, even the autobiographical Jo-Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, which he co-wrote and directed. He needed a live audience and a stage that he could people with characters, all of them rendered so vividly that even inanimate objects acquired distinct personalities. (Pryor's crack pipe in Live on the Sunset Strip spoke with a more distinctive voice than the leads in many contemporary films.) For now, though, See No Evil, Hear No Evil will have to hold us. Recommended.
1980
Extended Edition
2010
2017
2012
Unrated Edition
2013
2018
1996
Warner Archive Collection
1990
1994
1982
1977
1990
1989
2013
Totally Irresponsible Edition
2011
Bruno
2009
2018
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1943
2004