Movie Review: See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989)

The movie stars Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder, Kevin Spacey, Joan Severance and Alan North.

My wife decided to skip her evening workout because of a headache and, because we had some extra time as a result, I ended up watching a movie with her. I had recorded this film off of one of our movie channels some time ago and, even though we had already seen it more than once, I decided it would be a good choice. As it turns out, it was an even better movie than I remembered.

I've seen just about every one of the movies that pair Wilder with Pryor and continued to be amazed by the pairing. They almost seem to feed off of each other and this movie was no exception to that, especially when they were pairing up to escape the police or the bad guys.

The overall plot of this movie is also halfway decent. While it does get to be a little predictable at times, there are just enough minor twists, such as a car rolling down a hill while Dave (Wilder) is standing on it or Wally (Pryor), pretending to be a doctor, answering questions at a medical convention, to keep the film entertaining.

Probably the only real negative about this movie, other than the large amount of bad language (which may offend some people), is it is one of those films that require you to overlook a lot of goofs. This is especially true of Wilder's Dave character, who is supposed to only be able to read lips but, throughout the film, seems to have no problem being part of a conversation even when he's not looking at the people when they are talking.

I also have a hard time with the addition of the main bad guy, Sutherland (Anthony Zerbe). Not only is his role too limited to be memorable (he doesn't appear until toward the very end of the movie), he just seems to be a bit of an overkill as far as bad guys are concerned. The pairing of Eve (Severance) and Kirgo (Spacey) is pretty formidable (and entertaining to watch). The only thing Sutherland does is interrupt that chemistry and make them seem like lesser bad guys than they are.

Mostly because of the language and sexual references, this movie likely isn't going to be one everyone will enjoy. But, if you are able to overlook that, it is a very funny movie that is worth taking the time to watch at least once.

My Grade: A