Philo takes part in a bare knuckle fight – as he does – to make some more money than he can earn from his car repair business. He decides to retire from fighting, but when the Mafia come along and arrange another fight, he is pushed into it. A motorcycle gang and an orangutan called Clyde all add to the ‘fun’.
Any Which Way You Can (1980) Movie Review
The commercial success of Clint Eastwood’s portrayal of Philo, a truck driver with an orangutan as a pet and a second job as a bare-knuckle fighter, in Every Which Way But Loose (1978), all but guaranteed that audiences wouldn’t see him again. Any Which Way You Can is abject garbage, as opposed to Every Which Way But Loose, which is a terrible film that can be excused by assuming that Clint Eastwood wanted a break from playing secretive avengers. Any Which Way You Can, which sprawls over an absurd 118-minute running time and recycles the plot points from the previous movie, is punishingly foolish. The decision is made in the opening credits scene, a drab montage of a pickup truck travelling while Eastwood and Ray Charles sing the soundtrack’s horrifying country tune, “Beer’s to You.”
The dull storyline follows. Philo quits from fighting after being left by country music star Lynn (Sondra Locke) in the last movie, but gangsters offer him $25,000 to face Jack (William Smith), a boxer with a reputation for killing his opponents. Meanwhile, Philo gets into mischief with his drinking companion Orville (Geoffrey Lewis) and his obnoxious mother (Ruth Gordon). Everything happens as expected.
Philo’s friends beg him not to fight, but criminals later bribe him into doing so. The picture pauses frequently for musical performances (by Glen Campbell, Locke, and others), as well as sequences of Clyde urinating in police cars and sharing a hotel room with a flirtatious female orangutan. Clyde can be seen dancing at one moment to the tune of “Orangutan Hall of Fame.” The idiocy has reached an intolerable level by the time Any Which Way You Can reaches its low point, which features cross-dressing bikers, a 20-minute fistfight, and homophobic dialogue. With Pink Cadillac from 1989, please give Eastwood a wide room. Nevertheless, Any Which Way You Can marked the end of the actor’s orangutan phase.
