The follow-up to UPTOWN Saturday NIGHT, LET'S DO IT AGAIN re-teams Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier as a couple of lodge members determined to save their club by hypnotizing a scrawny boxer into becoming a fight champ. TV-star Jimmie Walker plays the boxer and he has about as much personality as a TV-dinner. The laughs comes not via Walker, although his character's name is priceless, or the idiotic plot, but almost single-handedly from Cosby, who's given one of his rare chances to break loose in a movie. It's a shame he's spent the last twenty five years squandering his comic sensibility on vapid sitcoms. Poitier directed, the funky music score is by Curtis Mayfield and the excellent title song is performed by the Staple Singers.

This time Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby play 2 friends who belong to a group and were supposed to be raising money. They end up trying to train a boxer to beat the current champ by hypnotizing him. They end up getting their wives involved and Denise Nicholas has the best line of all - "Will you tell that girl to get that thing out of my face before I make her eat it?" THey are so over the top that it makes it even better. The supporting cast is pretty much the same as the previous movie. If nothing else, Sidney Poitier is keeping a lot of black actors employed! Once you get into it, you will truly enjoy it. Jimmy Walker isn't even the best part of the movie.

Although not as good as its predecessor, "Uptown Saturday Night", this sequel always provides some good laughs, especially if you overlook the wide-eyed Amos & Andy style acting of the principals (the worst perpetrator, oddly enough, being the typically stoic Sidney Poitier). Minstrel-esque hamming for the camera aside, this one is just plain fun to watch. Calvin Lockhart and John Amos are great comedic villains, almost playing their roles straight amidst the tom-foolery surrounding them.As an African-American who grew up in the 70's, this and all the other Blaxploitation films provides a nostalgic, although somewhat exaggerated, look at life in the Black community. Put "Let's Do It Again" on a triple-bill with "Car Wash" and "Cooley High" and you'll have an entertaining blast from the past.

Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier play working class men who want to get rich. They come up with $20,000 for a scheme, but $18,000 of that comes from their lodge's building fund. The men take their wives to New Orleans and, while there, they see an opportunity in an inept boxer, played by Jimmie Walker, who has the opportunity to win the middleweight title. Poitier hypnotizes the boxer and makes him very confident, and the men pose as New York millionaires and place bets with a bookie (well played by John Amos) who later figures out what they did and wants to take advantage of the situation, possibly bringing down rival Biggie Smalls.Cosby is his usual self, only hipper (especially when he dresses in wild outfits to pretend to be rich). It's a real pleasure to see Poitier in a role that you can laugh at, since most of his characters have been so sophisticated. The two men together are great, especially when they are trying to get out of jams. I especially enjoyed seeing Cosby pretend to be a big-time gangster while talking on the phone. Walker, of course, was one of the best buffoons in 1970s TV, and he doesn't disappoint here. Even when his character is confident and talented, he still has that cartoonish quality about him. Curtis Mayfield's music, with vocal performances by the Staples Singers, added a lot to the movie. It wasn't quite a family movie, but it was quite clean compared to similar movies being made today, with very little cursing and not much to really object to.I had a good time.