Hanky Panky (1982)

Best movie of this year hands down!

I love this movie so much

Absolutely Fantastic

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

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.

This is such a great classical Gene Wilder movie. The first one he starred in with Gilda and they married soon after. Full of funny Wilder mannerisms. If you are not a fan of clean comedy you may find it not to your liking. In my personal favorites collection. It has everything a comedy should have. Wilder and Radner seem to feed off each other in their comedy. There is a lot of contrived material, but this is fiction and this material can be considered poetic license. Gene Wilder is at his usual with his unique mannerisms and his character portrayal. There are some extremely funny moments. There are some slow moments when the thin plot is being expanded. But this is not a movie you view for high drama, it is a movie you view just for the sheer pleasure of laughing.

Strained comedy/ thriller with Wilder and Radner trying too hard to inject energy into a lifeless script. Few laughs surface and that is a shame on the part of Wilder and Radner. Poitier directed.

Upon its 1982 release, "Hanky Panky" was universally panned by critics and shunned by moviegoers. But the first film to team Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner -- a pairing that resulted in two more movies and an offscreen marriage -- is a very funny, wildly entertaining film in the Hitchcock tradition. Originally intended as another Gene Wilder-Richard Pryor vehicle, the Pryor role was rewritten for a girl and Radner was cast. "Hanky Panky" is reminiscent of Wilder's 1976 "Silver Streak;" as in that film, he again plays a nice guy in over his head, being trailed by both cops and killers. Radner plays the girl who believes he is innocent, and inevitably the two fall in love. The film gives both Wilder and Radner a chance to display their unique brands of comedy, especially in the film's funniest scene in which Wilder refuses to accept that the pilot of the plane they are flying in has died. A must for devoted Wilder and Radner fans!