Tonight's cinematic misadventure was Silver Streak (1976) starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. This movie also starts the guy from Superman (Ned Beatty), the guy from My Favorite Martian, Jaws from James Bond, and Fred Willard. You would think such a loaded and eclectic cast of characters would be hilarious. Alas.
Silver Streak is the story of a mild-manner book editor who witnesses a murder on a train. He gets tossed from the train multiple times by the bad guys only to get back on the train to rescue a woman he hooked up with on his first night on the train. Sounds entertaining enough.
However, this movie is nearly 2 hours long. Richard Pryor doesn't enter the movie until an hour in. This movie should been 90 minutes, tops. It plays like a drama with a touch of humor, instead a full-blown comedy, which would have been much better. I know movies in the 70s were slower paced than the present day, but this movie is slow even for then. Although their pairing is great, Richard Pryor doesn't add enough to Wilder's slow story build for this to have any lasting value.
Grade: 3 silver slow stars out of 5.
