This movie features the major black entertainers of 1974: Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, Harry Belafonte, and others, all showing their comic acting chops. And the comedy works.
The story itself is about how two black friends enter an illegal nightclub, only for everyone there to be robbed by an armed gang of all their possessions. The worst part of the robbery is the fact that one of them has a winning lottery ticket, and our two heroes are determined to get that back-without letting their wives know that they had been in that nightclub in the first place.
They seek help from various places-a black politician who puts on an "African" outfit when he hears two black constituents are coming to visit him, a black private eye, several black gangsters, and a black preacher. Most of the movie basically consists of the various performers getting laughs, and they succeed. Basically, the movie is an excuse to show vaudeville-type entertainment, but it works.
The story itself is about how two black friends enter an illegal nightclub, only for everyone there to be robbed by an armed gang of all their possessions. The worst part of the robbery is the fact that one of them has a winning lottery ticket, and our two heroes are determined to get that back-without letting their wives know that they had been in that nightclub in the first place.
They seek help from various places-a black politician who puts on an "African" outfit when he hears two black constituents are coming to visit him, a black private eye, several black gangsters, and a black preacher. Most of the movie basically consists of the various performers getting laughs, and they succeed. Basically, the movie is an excuse to show vaudeville-type entertainment, but it works.