All the Way, Boys

Più forte, ragazzi!; comedy, Italy, 1973; D: Giuseppe Colizzi, S: Bud Spencer, Terence Hill, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Carlos Munoz, Ricardo Pizzuti, Cyril Cusack

Latin America. Plata and Salud are two con men pilots who purposely crash planes so that their boss - Salud's brother - can cash in on the insurance. One day their plane really suffers a malfunction and crashes in the jungle. After a long walk, they meet emerald searchers and make friends with the old Matto, not taking his story about his treasure seriously. They even start their own airline delivery for the poor people, until the rich and evil Mr. Ears violently destroys their business. Of course, as a consequence, Plata and Salud beat up him and his men. They take Matto to their home, but he dies and leaves them their treasure. Still, the corrupt police arrest them and they run away from the country, having earned nothing.

Out of 17 films that Bud Spencer and Terence Hill made together, "All the Way, Boys" is among the ones that seem closest to a good, decent fun, and not just a 'guilty pleasure'. Their strange raw charm and mainstream humor work the best in the funny exposition when their characters purposely crash a plane, then continuing with a whole bunch of well thought out gags - for instance, in one scene they just "borrow" a car from a rich lady to get to a big town, then randomly finding a police officer and giving him the keys to the vehicle, nonchalantly saying: "Here, we found this lost car some 100 miles away from here." But, the middle of the film is heavily overstretched, vague and forced, dragging occasionally since it contains too many filler scenes, some of which are grittier than your run-of-the-mill Spencer and Hill movie, up until it returns back in shape with the hilarious finale. A very solid film with the best gags getting played out somewhere in the finale: after they beat up all the bad guys, the two heroes can't figure out what to do with them. So they just send them in a canoe drifting down the river, but then constantly bring up some random "details" they forgot, like: "The river has more piranhas than water." - "Oh, I forgot that there's a big waterfall just down the stream!" - "And maybe I shouldn't have made those three holes in their canoe."

Grade:+