The Longshot/They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way (1986) Review

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(More customer reviews)Those who remember watching The Carol Burnett Show know that Tim Conway is perhaps the funniest actor to ever live. The two films on this double feature DVD, Longshot and They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way, are not legendary classic comedies, but they each contain a number of very funny scenes and offer an overall kooky good time. Tim Conway not only stars in both films, he wrote both of them. Longshot (1985) is particularly noteworthy because it features a reunion of the funniest comic duo of all time, Conway and Harvey Korman. They team up with Jack Weston and Ted Wass to form a team of all-time losers and underdogs. They continually berate themselves for passing up opportunities in the past, missing out on some big payoffs just because they are afraid to take risks. When a stable worker from the tracks tells them he can guarantee the victory of a longshot horse in a certain race, they decide, for once, to go for it all the way. Their partner in the stables has a special little pep pill that will make the horse run like the wind, and he agrees to slip the pill to the horse if the guys will place a bet for him along with themselves. Logic and common sense says the horse can't possibly win, but the guys not only place a huge bet on the horse, they borrow all of the money from a local mobster. As the movie progresses, there is a lot of pretty funny physical comedy, Jonathon Winters shows up to add his own twist of fun to the proceedings, and the ending plays out much better than I expected.
They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way is actually the older of these two films, dating back to 1978. In this one, Tim Conway teams up with Chuck McCann as incompetent police officers who are sent to jail undercover to try to find out where a notorious bank robber stashed the money from his heist. No one at the prison knows they are cops, and no one would believe it, anyway, as these guys are just pathetically slow about a lot of things. They find the money a few days before they are set to be released, but to their great dismay the only person besides themselves who knows they aren't really criminals suddenly dies. Faced with the dire circumstances of a ten-year stay in prison, the duo decides to break out of jail and take the recovered money to the governor. There are some really funny scenes in this movie, including a truly classic scene wherein Tim Conway finds himself ordered to pull the warden's bad tooth and has just a little bit of trouble with the Novocain - this scenario reminded me a lot of some of Conway's classic performances on The Carol Burnett Show. Another memorable scene features Conway impersonating a Japanese translator at the governor's party. Interestingly, this movie features two characters from The Dukes of Hazzard - Enos (Sonny Shroyer) and Ben Jones (Cooter). This ending of this movie did leave me feeling a tiny bit cheated, but I can't complain about all the laughs I had along the way.
If you are a fan of Tim Conway, this double feature DVD is certainly worth picking up at its affordable price; you get about three hours and fifteen minutes of comedy, and you'll certainly enjoy a number of really funny scenes even if the movies as a whole don't live up to your expectations. For me, the dentistry scene in They Went That-A-Way is worth the price of the DVD all by itself.

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