CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

mark.waltz A similar set-up of a film made after this one shows that even an apparent rip-off can be funny, although I can tell honestly that the 1987 Bette Midler/Shelley Long comedy was not ripping this off. It's a shame because I had high hopes for the first pairing of Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner, and they end up with a humorless thriller that wastes their talents. If I had wanted a spy thriller, I would have gotten a James Bond film, not Willy Wonka meets Emily Latella. Wilder is in the wrong place at the wrong time, ending up accused of killing Kathleen Quinlan and on the run with Radner, going from New York to Boston to the grand canyon while being chased by Richard Widmark and his thugs for a convoluted old computer tape. It is a mess of a plot with familiar character players popping up in minute long cameos. It took a while for this to get off the ground, and I breathed a sigh of relief when Gilda showed up. Unfortunately, there aren't really any major laughs, and far too many plot twists, none of which are thick enough to fill up the holes. Gene and Gilda deserved a lot better than this, especially in a film directed by Sidney Poitier.

oOoBarracuda In 1982, Gene Wilder took a break from writing and the director's chair to solely serve as the star of Sidney Poitier's 1982 film Hanky Panky. Pairing with him as a female lead was Gilda Radner. The two first met on the set and love quickly blossomed culminating in a marriage a few years later. It all began on Hanky Panky where the two principles become two people, one wrongly accused of a crime, running from the law together to protect their names and solve a mystery while they're at it. Michael Jordon (Gene Wilder) is an architect visiting New York on business when he jumps into a cab with a distressed woman, Janet Dunn (Kathleen Quinlan). Through flirting and trying to get Janet to have a drink with him, she tells him she is on the run and asks him to put an envelope into a mailbox for him. Michael obliges and unwittingly puts himself in harms way delivering this package. to try to clear things up, Michael travels back to the hotel she was staying in, only to find her in a scuffle with another man. Being filmed on camera at the scuffle with a gun in his hand, he is believed to be the nefarious character she was fighting with. With everyone chasing him despite his innocence, Michael tries to evade, seeking refuge in the apartment he was staying in while in New York. As he is packing his suitcase in the apartment, a woman Kate Hellman (Gilda Radner) comes in, and believing she is a burglar, Michael fights her until the lights are turned on and the two realize neither is a danger. When the police show up at the apartment, Michael has to leave immediately, and Kate decides to come with him to both aid in clearing his name and investigate her brother's death personally. Neither can expect just what they will have to do to get these goals accomplished, but are in it together, as long as it takes. It is almost magical to see a real life romance blossom on-screen. Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner's incredible chemistry is apparent, even if one is only half watching the film. The chemistry is sensational; you can really tell the two are falling in love, and makes Hanky Panky all the more fun to watch. There were also a number of great comedic gags in the film. The scene in which Michael takes over flying a plane is almost as hilarious as the scene in which Michael needs a change of clothes and takes a magic suit and can't find his change on a bus. The comedy was not without its flaws, however. For instance, there is so much going on in the film that not everything gets fleshed out by the film's end. The entire mystery is never solved, or revealed to the audience, so it is a little hard to become too invested in the film. That being so, Hanky Panky is a good Saturday night comedy that you won't regret watching, even if it's only to see Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner fall in love.

bkoganbing Although the title is Hanky Panky we get very little of that during the course of this movie. Kind of like Cary Grant in North By Northwest Gene Wilder gets caught up accidentally in a web of espionage and treason.Watching Hanky Panky I couldn't help think of the Alfred Hitchcock classic and how the unflappable and witty Cary Grant is chased from New York City to Rapid City, South Dakota with that climax on Mount Rushmore. What worked well for Grant and Hitchcock did not work well for the hysterical Gene Wilder who does that best on screen as he has since The Producers. Of course Gilda Radner is no Eva Marie Saint, in fact Gilda is surprisingly subdued in Hanky Panky.Gene is an innocent schnook who is subletting an apartment from a man who gets killed. Wilder is from Chicago and by being there gets himself involved with the poisoning of National Security chief Robert Prosky and the shooting of Kathleen Quinlan and has the cops and everyone else chasing him. The Hitchcockian McGuffin is a computer tape with all kinds of secret codes that can't be copied except it has. Richard Widmark who has reverted here to one of those villainous types from his early days in film is working for a high level traitor who we only learn the identity of in the last minutes of the film.Wilder's hysterical style was a bit over the top. Works much better with Cary Grant's charm and unflappability.

tfrizzell The typical mistaken identity thing here as a man named Michael Jordon (go figure that one) played by Gene Wilder gets caught in a web of bad guys. He is being chased for a murder he did not commit and it is also believed that some classified military secrets were stolen as well. Naturally Wilder falls in love with Gilda Radner in the process and constantly tries to elude Richard Widmark. Sidney Poitier actually directed this dud that just never does really come together. The routine is nothing new and it ends up being just like a Road-Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoon that has silly episodic situations coming at you over and over again. Not a total waste, but still not really interesting enough to make itself any different from dozens of the kind. 2.5 out of 5.