Teaming Off

By R.S.

HANKY PANKY

Directed by Sidney Poitier

Screenplay by Henry Rosenbaum and David Taylor

The police are after him, suspecting him of murder. Some renegade CIA agents are also in nasty pursuit, convinced he helped repossess some missile plans that they went to a lot of trouble to steal from the Government. No question about it, mild-mannered Architect Michael Jordan (Gene Wilder) has to run for cover. But when he packs his bag, he pauses to match up his socks and then roll them up into prim little balls, just the way his mother taught him.

It is a funny, human moment, and if Hanky Panky had 30 or 40 more of them it might have been a congenial little picture. It certainly would have been better if Gilda Radner had not decided that for her next impersonation she would do a romantic ingenue. She is, in lantern-jaw looks and brash spirit, unsuited to playing such a role straight and apparently unwilling to parody it. Wilder seems so embarrassed for her that he tries to do the acting for both of them, with results that strain his normally funny interpretation of the coward who finds, if not grace, then shrewdness, under pressure.

In fairness to the performers, it must be said they get no help from writers who lost their sense of humor in their labyrinthine plot. The story is illogical and is without the kind of inventive startlements that make logic irrelevant to pleasure. Director Sidney Poitier is always cutting to some chase or other, all of which he handles with glum professionalism. But it is disheartening that a star team with the potential brilliance of Wilder and Radner had to take off on such an ungainly turkey. --R.S.

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