Sidney Poitier & Bill Cosby star as working class married men in Chicago (Poitier is an ironworker, Cosby a cabbie). Cosby convinces his straight pal Poitier to take a walk on the wilder side and accompany him to an upscale speakeasy. After Cosby bluffs their way inside, masked men rob the joint, stealing Poitier’s wallet, which he discovers the next day holds a winning $50,000 lottery ticket.

The working stiffs first approach a jumpy private eye (Richard Pryor, in a hilarious cameo) to help them, but after that fails, resort to conning rival gangsters “Geechie” Dan Beauford (Harry Belafonte, imitating Marlon Brando) and Silky Slim (Calvin Lockhart) in an effort to retrieve the wallet.

Directed by Sidney Poitier, from a screenplay by Richard Wesley, this was the first of three popular buddy comedies featuring Poitier & Cosby in the mid-’70s. Poitier wanted to answer critics who felt that his dignified screen persona – espousing upper middle class (re: white) values – had alienated urban audiences. When he began his directing, Poitier shifted to comedies, which proved extremely successful with both white and urban audiences.

Uptown Saturday Night is funny in spots, but is uneven, as if the filmmakers were unsure whether what they were trying was working from scene to scene. Poitier originally wanted to produce and direct, rather than also play a lead role, and his character acts the straight man, standing around and deferring too much to Cosby, who runs away with the picture.

Cosby does amazing work here, playing a bearded, working class cat with a cool rap. In a hilarious scene, Cosby marches into a bar and starts throwing his weight around, chasing a dude out with a barstool, before having to talk his way past a diminutive gangster (Harold Nicholas) with karate skills. The bit is even funnier than Eddie Murphy’s bar raising scene in 48 HRS. because Cosby has to play both a loudmouth and a chump in the same scene.

Other cast members don’t fare as well. Flip Wilson appears in two scenes as a preacher and brings absolutely nothing to the film. Rosalind Cash and Ketty Lester are woefully underwritten as the wives and have nothing to do here. In addition to Pryor’s great bit, Paula Kelly pops up as a two-fisted speakeasy patron and is dynamite, while Poitier & Cosby do work extremely well together. The film suffers greatly whenever they’re off screen.