Richard Pryor Here And Now
For his final concert movie, it’s pretty clear that Pryor (who also directed) was openly acknowledged as a genius by this point, and perhaps that gave him the right to be a tad self-indulgent in his style here. Shot in 1983 on location in New Orleans, the film is nowhere near as funny as his Live On The Sunset Strip, but the lowered humor level is tempered by Pryor’s ability to go on stage and be more of a storyteller than a laugh-out-loud comedian and in doing that he certainly excels. The performance does feature much more audience interaction from the (obviously hammered) crowd in attendance than usual, and Pryor plays off of it well, especially during a bizarre bit where an audience member actually brings a live crab in a jar and hands it to him onstage, provoking a pretty funny spur of the moment routine. Much more of a documentary early on, the film starts with people being interviewed outside of a theater interspersed with interview snippets of Pryor talking about where he is at his life right now. However, early on in the show he does make the cardinal mistake of actually recycling some of the same jokes that he had originally used so well in Sunset Strip. Once he starts with the storytelling, it’s hit or miss really, from another lame rendition of his old standby character Mudbone, to a still-relevant observation of how America’s military seems to have their greatest success in fucking with smaller countries, to a chilling, yet mildly amusing, on-stage portrayal of a heroin junkie going through the throes of an overdose. Pryor strikes the viewer as one of, if not the most intelligent observers of human nature in his time, and while this show might not be the best intro to his style of humor for the uninitiated, it’s still interesting, at times poignant, and, when it wants to be, funny…
7/10