LET’S DO IT AGAIN followed up on 1974s winner Uptown Saturday Night by reuniting star & director Sidney Poitier with Bill Cosby in another buddy caper. Again written by Richard Wesley, they play different characters but of the same type (genial blue collar screwups), once more involved with various crooks in a scheme centered around money. In a good cause. Tagging along from before are Calvin Lockhart (as another slick hood) and Lee Chamberlin (this time playing Poitier’s wife). It’s overlong and even sillier than Uptown, but the sillier stuff is the funniest, and it was even more popular at the box office, 16th place in 1975, reaping $36,800,000.

“Our women must NEVER know nuthin’ about this.”

Pals ‘Clyde Williams’ (Poitier) and ‘Billy Foster’ (Cosby) decide to bake rescue bread for the financially strapped ‘Sons and Daughters of Shaka’, a fraternal lodge in Atlanta of which Billy is a treasurer. Their plan is to use Clyde’s skill as a hypnotist to take a hopeless underdog prizefighter and trance-convince him he’s superbad; they will then hornswoggle various gambling syndicates into making ‘sure thing’ bets that will bite them on the back end, Clyde & Billy cleaning up. Their wives ‘Beth’ (Denise Nicholas gets laffs) and ‘Dee Dee’ (Chamberlin) are roped into helping out. Naturally, plans must be frantically reworked during their stint in New Orleans, since the hoodwinked hoodlums wise up after a while.

This time around Cosby takes more of the weight than Poitier (Sidney comes off a bit forced, focusing more on directing everyone else than honing his performance), with the best material (the goofiest and with the funniest sight gags) going to the elastic Jimmie Walker, 27, as hypno-powered boxer ‘Bootney Farnsworth’. His ‘dad’ from TVs hit Good Times, John Amos, is one of the leading gangsters, ‘Kansas City Mack’. Lockhart is Mack’s opposite number ‘Hiawatha “Biggie” Smalls’. Ossie Davis is ‘Elder Johnson’—is there a joke in there?—charismatic leader of the Sons and Daughters of Shaka. They all ante up and the results are breezily entertaining.

Shot in New Orleans and Atlanta. Curtis Mayfield did the soundtrack, which includes numbers from The Staples Singers. With Mel Stewart, Jophery Brown, Julius Harris, Talya Ferro (“hot stuff”, to quote Donna Summer), Billy Eckstein, Val Avery, and Med Flory. Early on there are brief cameos from George Foreman (25, post ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ with Muhammad Ali) and Jayne Kennedy (23 & accident-causing). 110 minutes, about fifteen more than are really necessary. Poitier, Cosby and Nicholas came back two years later with A Piece Of The Action.