...probably the single most mediocre movie Eastwood ever made.
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Sooner or later almost every comic actor wants to do "Hamlet," and almost every action hero wants to do comedy. Stallone has done comedy, Schwarzenegger, Burt Reynolds, Bruce Willis.
It was only a matter of time before Clint Eastwood would get around to it, so in 1978 he made "Every Which Way But Loose." It is probably the single most mediocre movie Eastwood ever made, but the public loved it and the film became one of the actor's biggest moneymakers. Go figure. It was so popular it spawned a sequel two years later, "Any Which Way You Can," that was almost indistinguishable from its predecessor. Go figure again. Both movies are available on DVD for the fan who can't get enough of brainless heroes, clever apes, and copious car chases.
It's appropriate that Warner Brothers produced the film because it's little more than a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon, with Eastwood the chief looney. The actor pokes fun at his usual macho image with the laid-back charm and easy smile we've come to expect from his less-serious roles; but that only serves him a short while when there are so few moments of genuine character, genuine emotion, or genuine humor in the picture. The movie was directed by James Fargo, who a couple of years earlier had directed Eastwood in "The Enforcer." This was quite a change of pace for him.
Eastwood is a good ol' boy truck driver, Philo Beddoe, in cowboy hat and jeans, who lives in Pacoima, CA, one of those sprawling suburbs of Los Angeles that spread out into the San Fernando Valley. Pacoima is best known as the birthplace of singer Ritchie Valens, if that's of any interest. Philo makes a few extra bucks on the side in bare-knuckles pickup fights. He lives with his best friend, Orville Boggs (Geoffrey Lewis), a tow-truck operator; Orville's goofy, foul-mouthed old mother, Ma Boggs (Ruth Gordon); and Clyde, a male orangutan Philo won in a bet. The ape upstages everyone.
Played against a background of ever-present country-western music, the story focuses on two things: Philo chasing after a girl, and everybody else chasing after Philo. Every place Philo goes, he gets into trouble. (The role was originally meant for Burt Reynolds, but Eastwood saw it first and liked it.) Philo never gets into any serious criminal trouble, mind you, just trouble. He stops in for a drink after work and immediately gets into a fight over peanuts with a customer at the bar. He stops at a traffic signal and gets into a fight with a pair of motorcyclists. That kind of thing. For a basically gentle, peace-loving guy, Philo is always fighting. And, of course, winning.
He meets a new flame one night in a country-western night club, the Palomino, where an attractive singer, Lynn Halsey-Taylor (Sondra Locke), is entertaining. It's love at first sight. Before she sings, though, the club's main attraction, real-life country singer Mel Tillis, gets in a song or two. Later, Charlie Rich also gets in a few songs, so be prepared for a truckload of country singing for nearly two hours. Anyway, Philo and Lynn seem to hit it off, they spend a little time together, and then she zips away unannounced for Colorado, leaving Philo high and dry. So Philo does what any sensible male would do; he packs up Orville and Clyde and they take off in hot pursuit.
But nothing is so simple because Philo is himself pursued by a gang of comic-book bikers, the Black Widows, and a pair of policemen he's somehow offended. It all gets very silly very fast, with hardly a smile anywhere in sight. It's just, you know, good ol' boy stuff of the kind Burt Reynolds made popular in his "Smokey and the Bandit" films from about the same period. If Reynolds could do it, Eastwood could do it, and Eastwood did do it--to the tune of over $100,000,000 in grosses. A lot of motorcycles bite the dust in this one, and a lot of people get beat up without getting hurt.
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[release]9975[/release]