MOVING

title: MOVING
year: 1988
cast: Richard Pryor
rating: ***

Sure, it's yet another everything-bad-happens-to-the-main-character family film but there's enough going on, at all times, to make this work despite the cliches. Although star Richard Pryor is showing signs of the horrible disease that would eventually end his career, and life, he's got gusto as he loses his job and eventually moves his family to another state. Dealing with crooked movers, obnoxious next-door neighbors (both played by Randy Quaid), a frustrated family and just about everything save locusts and falling frogs, Pryor keeps us both rooting for him (to succeed) and against him (to have more misadventurous bad luck) at the same time.