Uptown Saturday Night ***(1974, Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, Harry Belafonte) – Classic Movie Review 7905

The then highly likeable star pair of Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby hit a profitable vein of Seventies-style broad comedy with the 1974 Uptown Saturday Night, a zany farcical tale of two innocents, Steve Jackson (Poitier) and Wardell Franklin (Cosby), entering a lion’s den of crooks and godfathers. Visiting the illegal nightclub of Madame Zenobia (Lee Chamberlin), Steve and Wardell are robbed of their wallets containing a winning lottery ticket and then set out to recover it.

As director, Poitier shows more control in the sequels Let’s Do It Again (1975) and A Piece of the Action (1977), but the film’s enthusiasm and daftness are engaging. Poitier, Cosby and Harry Belafonte show why they really were the business back then, and there are a number of good roles for other African American stars of the time, notably including Roscoe Lee Browne, Richard Pryor, Paula Kelly, and Calvin Lockhart,

Also in the cast are Flip Wilson, Rosalind Cash, Lee Chamberlin, Johnny Sekka, Lincoln Kilpatrick, Don Marshall, Harold Nicholas, Ketty Lester and Jophery C Brown.

In July 2018, it was announced that Malcolm D Lee is in talks to direct a
remake of Uptown Saturday Night with Kevin Hart.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7905

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