The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

The comedy in the movie Stir Cruy IS entirely predictable to an- yone who's in the least familiar with previous screen performances by Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. The two actors. who previously appeared together in the 1976 film Silver Streak. team up in this pic ture as down-and-out New Yorkers heading for California. Somewhere in the mid-west, however. they are mistaken for bank robbers and end up in prison. Indeed. the characters portrayed by Wilder and Pryor seem more fashioned by the performers them- selves than by any function they serve within the story, Wilder in particular just repeats the same facial expressions and physical and vocal mannerisms whith he's used in several other pictures Imagination kicking in qt Stir Crazy Most of Stir Crazy. as the tulle implies, takes place behind bars. with the mam action revolving around a far-fetched plan to es- cape ICs broad. heavy-handed humor that domninates throughout the movie, and there's little that's either Imaginative or innovative in the screenplay by Bruce Jay Fried- man or m the direction by Sidney Poitier, It's the first picture Potier has directed that he hasn't also acted in, but his concentration on only one job hasn't resulted in a picture that reflects any particular directorial style, or even control, It would seem that he's just more or less let the stars do their own thing. The imprison setting could have provided a wide choice of support- ing characters. but here again writer Friedman and director Poi- tier have opted for the stereotypes. including a rather tasteless and backward-looking interpretation of a homosexual prisoner by actor Georg Stanford Brown. There are some fairly amusmg incidents within the loosely-knit storyline. and the slapstick and mugging antics of the stars cer- tainly will appeal to youngsters. Doubtlessly, too, Wilder and Pryor fans will feel sufficiently satisfied seeing them do what they do best, or at least most often, Less than a year ago, the lam guage in Stir Crazy, if not the im- plications contained in certain scenes, would have brought this picture a restricted rating in On- tario. but Since The Tin Drum de- bacle the province's film clas- sification board would stem to have relaxed Its censorship atti- tude somewhat, Thus, despite the By Victor Laurence Olivier performs with the Jewish accent and some slight- ly overdone dramatics as the father who wants his son to carry on in the family tradition. The pic- ture's best performance comes from Lucie Arnaz as a spirited manager who launches the aspiring singer's career in what must be re cord time - something like two weeks from his first stepping into a recording studio to appearing as the warm-up act for a major enter tainer. This is one movie that makes for better listening than watching For the most part. in any case, the current film seems to be little more than a showcase for the star's singing talents, He performs something like a dozen different songs and repeats two or three of them at least a couple times In fact. at times it seems more like a sales pitch for the album than an integral part of the movie. It's a sentimental and cliche-rid- den tale that definitely doesn't gam in dramatic impact from the un- sympathetic, one-leyel charac- terization provided by Diamond, Stanton presence of the big four-letter word and Its adjective! variations. Stir Crazy has been given the merely advisory recommended-as- adult-entertainment rating with an added cautionary warning that "some language may be offen- swe ., But that's where any likelihood of greatness begins and ends with regard to this picture, the second Hollywood remake of the 1927 his- tory-making first “talkie" which launched the screen career of Al Jolson. lln what probably was cone sidered a tribute to the original. there's a scene in the current movie in which Diamond performs a number in black face. but without the racism implicit in minstrel shows, l . The same story, adapted from a 1925 stage play with the same title. also was filmed in 1953, with Danny Thomas playing the part of the Je- wish cantor's son who prefers sing- ing popular music to the traditional religious fare of his ancestors, The latest movie version of The Jazz Singer has a great soundtrack album. At least, it's a great one if you're a fan of songwriter-singer Neil Diamond, who makes his act- ing l 'l) debut in the film, ostensibly as the title character. “The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra Association was pleased to make available 50 Sym- phony tickets to Kiwanis on a two-for-one basis." explained Andrew Shaw, General Manager of the Orchestra. The man responsible for getting the tickets to the senior citizen homes and recreation centres is Ma jor George Heron. administrator oi the A.R. Goudie Eventide Home and chairman of the Kiwanis Mm- mittee over-seeing the project. He gave seats to Goudie Home, Parkwood Manor-Home for Senior Ci- tizens. Sunnyside Home, the Rockway Gardens Sen- ior Citizens Centre and the Waterloo Adult Recrea- tion Centre. A few tickets also went to senior citizen apartment buildings. ICs part of a program arranged by Kiwanis. the Orchestra. and administered by local semor citizen homes Kathy Durst. senior program coordinator at the Waterloo Adult Recreation Centre, agreed that reac- This season. some very special people are attend- ing the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra's Main Series concerts on Sunday nights. In a joint project with the K-W Kiwanis Club, the Orchestra has made available 50 seats to the Sunday concerts for use by local senior citizens Project gets seniors- to the 'symphony Gene Wilder stars in Stir Crazy WATERLOO CHRONICLE AEDNEAit9C/ANuArty 23. use: ._ PAGE 11 "We also had some people in wheelchairs going. Project Lift picked them up. and they were given special wheelchair allocation seats, Everyone was very co-operative" This is the first year that such a project has been undertaken by either Kiwanis or the Kitchener-Wa- terloo Symphony Orchestra. Response has been so favorable it likely will be continued next season, or- ganizers say. “We were very grateful to get the tickets. and the people who have received them have been grateful too One lady who went was a classical music buff but this was the first time she had heard the Kit- chener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra. “Some centres allocated their seats on a first come, first served basis, but we gave ours to seniors who would otherwise be unable to attend (because of a physical condition. age, or lack of transportation l. We have one program here called Senior Outing Day Care' and a lot of our seniors in this have physi- cal limitations and require one-to-one care -- they need an arm to lean on to get around -. so we gave tickets to those seniors (as well as to a staff member or a volunteer to accompany them). tion to the project has been “most favorable"