Man Friday

source: Man Friday

Moviecut—Man Friday

Man Friday

This half-baked version of the brilliant novel "Robinson Crusoe," is ruined by shoddy production values, poor plotting and woeful dialogue. Peter O' Toole - one of the greatest actors of his generation - should have been offered a better film than "Man Friday." Richard Roundtree (a flash in the pan) was making poor film after poor film. There may be some good photography but that can only compensate for so much.

Absent the Pandemic, this turns into a brilliant parody of post-George Floyd America and Anarcho-Capitalism. Meant to see it at age 32 and accidentally found it on YouTube, age 82. Yea, O'Toole's slightly hammy but not gratingly. I knew of Richard Roundtree only as the Blaxpolitation-era SHAFT. Crusoe explaining money and wages to Friday might have been lifted from a Democratic Socialists of America introduction to Karl Marx's theory of indentured labor. The Hang Glider scene doesn't work and didn't then but otherwise MAN FRIDAY has aged itself into front page 2020 relevance.

Peter O'Toole and Richard Roundtree play off each other in this "play" played out on an island. The strong religious overtones preached by O'Toole are off putting and grinds the film to a halt at regular intervals. The fact that the natives speak in English, and O'Tool's island is stocked with all matter of modern conveniences, sends believability out the window. Throw in some truly grating songs and you can easily deduce why the movie failed miserably. After about an hour, when the slow pace doesn't improve, you will be tempted to reach for the fast forward button. I gave up entirely to save myself from further disappointment. - MERK

Maybe this is where the Monty Python team got their idea of the dead parrot sketch.Personally I would have preferred it if Roundtree had terminated a wildly overreacting Peter O Toole and saved us his shouting and screamng.Perhaps the makers of this film should have gone on to make Oliver Twist with a kind hearted Beadle always handing out second helpings and Fagin running a orphanage.Would have made more sense than this.

This film is the allegorical definition of the white/black dynamic. The scene where "Friday"(not his given name)-now in psychic trauma, is first renamed then trained to call Crusoe "Master" is an intentionally aggressive polemic. Which begins a relentless,psychological,cultural,political,economic rape and exploitation his fellow castaway. In a very abstract view it is also a love story. I think Robinson Crusoe actually is in love with "Friday". It contains both the historical problem and the future solution for this permanent incompatibility. This is a must see film. It cannot be critiqued for "entertainment" value alone. I wish it was available on DVD.

I have not seen this in a long while, and it has not been released on VHS or DVD, but I remember it as in intelligent spoof of Robinson Crusoe. It is the same old story we all know, but it is told from the perspective of Friday, who, if I recall correctly, narrates the tale like a hip soul brother from the 1970's replete with a Jamaican accent. "Broter, lemme tell ya, iss da story o dis dumb wite mon, who doan know his ahs from a coconut grove." That's not exactly what he said, but it is the gist of how things are told. Friday, Richard Roundtree, who had just finished three movies and one television series as Shaft, is a wealth of oneupsmanship over the not too bright Crusoe, played superbly by Peter O'Toole. This is a must watch and a keeper. Write ABC Entertainment. Tell them to get it out on DVD. I think that one of the problems with this film is that AVCO Embassy Pictures, which produced it with ABC, went out of business years ago. A choice film.