{"id":2310,"date":"2024-08-15T21:08:12","date_gmt":"2024-08-15T21:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2310"},"modified":"2024-10-12T22:20:22","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T22:20:22","slug":"adios-amigo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/15\/adios-amigo\/","title":{"rendered":"Adios Amigo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Adios Amigo <\/strong>(1975)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Atlas Films\/Comedy-Western\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (some violence and suggestive content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Fred Williamson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Fred Williamson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Luchi De Jesus\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Tony Palmieri\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 11, 1976 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Fred Williamson, Richard Pryor, James Brown, Robert Phillips, Mike Henry.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0On a 1981 episode of Sneak Previews, Gene Siskel selected the comedy-western Adios Amigo <\/strong>as his \u201cDog of the Week\u201d except it wasn\u2019t. Let me explain. In his search for the week\u2019s Dog, he decided to check out the 1975 comedy starring Richard Pryor in rerelease to capitalize on the comedian\u2019s success in recent films like Stir Crazy and Bustin\u2019 Loose. It looked like it would stink, so Siskel went to see it. Much to his surprise, he ended up liking it leaving him Dog-less for that week\u2019s episode.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Adios Amigo<\/strong> didn\u2019t open in any cinemas near me at that time, but it did show up on one of the UHF channels (WPHL 17, I think) about a year later. I tried watching it, but didn\u2019t make it past the first half-hour. I couldn\u2019t get into it. I didn\u2019t give it another chance until I acquired a cheap used VHS copy from a video store going out of business in early \u201998. That time, I made it all the way through and didn\u2019t like it. It\u2019s fine, I only spent $1 on it anyway.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s hard to explain why I opted to rewatch Adios Amigo<\/strong> this past weekend. I guess like Siskel, I wanted to review a bad movie and it seemed like the right\/wrong choice. No surprise, I didn\u2019t like it any better than I did way back when. If anything, it\u2019s worse than I remember. What\u2019s even sadder is that it could have worked. Hell, it should have worked, especially with a power team like Pryor and Fred Williamson (Black Caesar) in the lead roles. Instead, it\u2019s a complete misfire.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The plot, if you can even call it that, centers on the misadventures of Big Ben (Williamson) and Sam Spade (Pryor) as they traverse the Wild West. Ben is a rancher forced off his land by a greedy land developer who frames him for robbery and has him carted off to jail. En route, the stagecoach is robbed by con man Spade who helps Ben escape. Now at this point, you\u2019d think the two men would team up to right all the wrongs done to Ben. NOPE! That plotline is completely dropped never to be brought up again. Instead, Spade attempts scam after scam only to fail; after which, he leaves Ben to deal with the fallout. That\u2019s pretty much the whole movie. It\u2019s not all that funny the first time and it\u2019s definitely not funny the 10th<\/sup> or 12th<\/sup> time (I lost track).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Perhaps the most interesting thing about Adios Amigo<\/strong> is how it came to be. Understandably frustrated after being denied the lead role in Blazing Saddles, a film he co-wrote with Mel Brooks, Pryor signed on to co-star with Williamson in his comedic western. Not much of a fan of Blazing Saddles, the Hammer decided to do his own take on the genre (he wrote, produced and directed it). He wanted it make it funny but realistic too. It succeeds at neither. It\u2019s essentially a hodge-podge of western tropes with Pryor joking his way through every scenario while Williamson chomps on his cigar. I\u2019ll admit Pryor is a funny guy and has the occasional moment here and there, but it\u2019s not enough to compensate for the poor writing and directing. It breaks my heart to say this because I really like Williamson, but Adios Amigo<\/strong> is a bad movie in all the wrong ways.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What I really can\u2019t get past is how amateurish Adios Amigo<\/strong> looks. To be fair, it\u2019s not all the filmmaker\u2019s fault. Some of it has to do with the poor quality of the copy on Tubi. The framing is off, especially in the beginning when Williamson fights a trio of varmints harassing a Native American woman in town. You can\u2019t even see the tops of their heads. The film hasn\u2019t aged particularly well either. It\u2019s grainy, blurry and too dark to see what\u2019s going in nighttime scenes. It\u2019s badly assembled and clumsily staged. It\u2019s not like Williamson hired an inexperienced editor. Gene Ruggiero worked on several films, including Best Picture winner Around the World in 80 Days, prior to Adios Amigo<\/strong>. Did he even give a s***? It would appear not.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Another thing that sucks about Adios Amigo<\/strong> is that Williamson and Pryor have no chemistry. That\u2019s not to say they give terrible individual performances. They don\u2019t, not really. Pryor does his usual jive schtick while Williamson acts the tough, taciturn cat. The problem is they\u2019re on autopilot the whole time. When they\u2019re in the same scene, which doesn\u2019t happen as often as you\u2019d think, it just feels off. I don\u2019t have a lot to say about the rest of the cast except that the James Brown listed in the credits isn\u2019t the James Brown you think it is. It\u2019s the guy from The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, NOT the soul\/funk singer.\u00a0 It would have been cool casting though, right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Adios Amigo<\/strong> is a complete waste of time for all involved. Even the stars admit it was a misfire. In an interview with Ebony magazine, Pryor issued an apology explaining he needed the money and would never do it again. He made some turkeys in his career (Superman III and Another You come to mind), but none as God-awful as Adios Amigo<\/strong>. BTW, the title refers to what Pryor\u2019s character says to Williamson right before he splits the scene of yet another failed con. It\u2019s also the title of the song that plays as a series of painted stills of the main characters in action marks the transition to the next scene. I wish they had just said adios to the script and ridden off into the sunset to come up with something better and funnier.<\/p>\n

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Copyright HAG \u00a92009<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adios Amigo (1975)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Atlas Films\/Comedy-Western\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (some violence and suggestive content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Fred Williamson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Fred Williamson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Luchi De Jesus\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Tony Palmieri\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 11, 1976 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Fred Williamson, Richard Pryor, James Brown, Robert Phillips, Mike Henry.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A Rating: * \u00a0On a 1981 episode of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-this-sucks-so-bad","category-westerns"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Adios-Amigo-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2310"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3307,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310\/revisions\/3307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}