Le menteur & le tricheur

Another You (1991)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Eddie Dash (Richard Pryor) is a con man who is forced to do community service so he agrees to take George (Gene Wilder) out of his sanitarium and go to a museum. Eddie is meant to show George a good time but before long George is mistaken for Abe Fielding, a very rich and very popular man. Eddie sees this as a way to get some quick cash so he plays along.

ANOTHER YOU has a really awful reputation for a number of reasons including the fact that it had a lot of pre-production issues, script re-writes and various other problems that ran into the production. It turned out to be a box office disaster and in fact it would be the final theatrical film for Wilder. With all of that being said, I think time has been quite friendly to the fourth and final teaming of Pryor and Wilder.

That's not to say that ANOTHER YOU is some sort of masterpiece because it isn't. You can call it the worst film that the duo made but that's just because they made three very good movies together and this one here it at least very funny in spots. There are many hilarious moments scattered throughout the film but the highlight from me happens early on when Wilder's character finally breaks and begins to lie. This long sequence inside a restaurant has Wilder at his very best as he goes from one personality to the next and it's very funny.

As you'd expect, Wilder and Pryor have some wonderful chemistry together and they just bounce off one another so perfectly that it's bound to get some laughs. You can tell Pryor was in the early stages of his Multiple Sclerosis but he still offers up a good performance. The film clearly belongs to Wilder who gets the better of the two roles and does a fine job with it. Mercedes Ruehl is also a lot of fun in her role and we get a nice supporting cast including Stephen Lang, Vanessa Williams, Peter Michael Geotz, Kevin Pollack and an uncredited Michael J. Pollard who also appeared in BONNIE AND CLYDE with Wilder.

The problem with ANOTHER YOU is that the last forty-minutes are pretty much dead. There's a twist in the story and the entire film changes, which is really too bad because this twist does nothing but add extra characters that weren't needed. What was working so well between Wilder and Pryor is pretty much thrown out the window and sadly the film does end on a sour note. Still, there are enough laughs here to make ANOTHER YOU worth watching.