This hysterically funny comedy about the hypocrisy of humanity is so delightfully khaki that you can't help but admire it for its audacity. The admiration starts with the performance of Richard Pryor playing three characters including father and son, as well as the priest who impregnates the wife of the son, leading to revenge which has prior seducing the minister's wife, and her revenge against him and her husband in getting pregnant herself. Pryor, as the son, is a very hypocritical character, married to Lonette McKee, but seducing the beautiful Margaret Avery ("The Color Purple") who threatens to dump him if he dares to sleep with his wife. Having tried to seduce his wife in the opening scene and asked for simple romantic talk, he is desperate for sexual relief, and after Avery's demands, McKee begins to try to entice her husband who is forced to remain true to Avery's demands, and after finding out that his wife has found relief elsewhere (and created a new life not seeded by him), she turns to Marilyn Coleman who resists at first as the piano teaching preacher's wife but later, filled with her own lust and loneliness, gives in, only to find out that she has been used.
There's also a subplot involving issues with the orange factory he works for, which brings him into contact with the criminal activity going on, involving Caucasian character actors Dolph Sweet and Morgan Woodard, and getting him into even more trouble than he had bargained for. Stepping in as a Greek chorus every now and then is Pryor as the sons sharp tongued father, a cruder version of Fred Sanford, getting laughs every time he makes a sardonic and foul mouthed observation. It's too bad that he only makes a few appearances, the main plot involving the son and his sexual deceits too. As the minister who has seduced the son's wife, fire guests to wear a hideous wig, and the confrontation scene is another very funny highlight. While the supporting cast is excellent, the film (based on a French comedy from a few years before) is completely dominated by Pryor in probably his most challenging part. The script is funny ("He's as flat as day old beer!") and the message that the film gives unique, basically saying that humanity is messed up and we just have to live and accept our flaws as well as everybody else's and not judge, also a light slap at religious hypocrisy and extremism as it says to remind the church leaders that they are as human as everybody else. Certainly a product of its time, it is still very funny, something that probably could not be done today with its suggestiveness over Pryor's rather dicey seduction attempts where the women get the best of him even though he eventually gets what he wants. I found it interesting that it doesn't really give any answers to how the plot should be wrapped up, but that's life and that's the way it goes up.
