Back Again

Let's Do It Again is one of the three movie Sidney Poitier made with Bill Cosby, along with Uptown Saturday Night and A Piece of the Action. They are a friendly fun take on the black experience - kind of anti-blaxploitation.

Poitier and Cosby, two ordinary blue-collar dudes in Atlanta, belong the the Sons and Daughters of Chaka lodge, which is going to lose its building to redevelopment. Lodge leader Ossie Davis explains this in a nice secular revival type meeting, very Black positive without being Black power. Cosby comes up with a way to get the money for a new building:

1.  They will go to New Orleans, where the middle weight boxing championship is being held.
2. Poitier will use his hypnosis trick to make the contender (outrageously outclassed Jimmie Walker) into the champ.
3. They bet all of the lodge's money on Walker at 5:1
4. Profit

In the process, we get to see Poitier and Cos goofing around New Orleans with their wives, we get them dressed in wild pimp getups to impress the gambling bosses, and a some Safety Last style skulking around Walker's hotel room. Fun and funny, but a little aimless, with an almost improvised feel to it, especially Cosby's little rants.

Well, they pull it off and get away with the dough, but the gangsters they won it off of track them down, and now they have to do it again.

I liked this a lot. It's fun and family friendly without being toothless. I see this as sort of anti-blaxploitation: it's an African American viewpoint, it's got hustlers, gamblers and pinpsuits, but it's all in fun. Another way to look at it is like Amos and Andy, with Cos as Kingfisher, gambling with the lodge's funds. But again, the rascals are earnest and honest, not lazy and no-account. So in a way, these movies are a political statement - a radical, middle-of-the-road statement.

In conclusion, I have to mention the Curtis Mayfield soundtrack, sung by the Staples Singers. The title song alone is worth the price of admission. If you are going to be competing with Superfly, you need something like this.