Der Spielgefährte (1982)

Der Spielgefährte: Directed by Richard Donner. With Richard Pryor, Jackie Gleason, Ned Beatty, Scott Schwartz. An underemployed reporter finds himself literally purchased as a toy for a rich spoiled brat.

“u0026quot;The Toyu0026quot; is a remake of the French movie u0026quot;Le Jouet,u0026quot; but writer Carol Sobieski and director Dick Donner have infused it with a racist theme that is specifically American.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eUS Bates (Gleason), a wealthy, powerful Louisiana industrialist purchases, Jack Brown, a janitor (Pryor) to perform as an object for his spoiled sonu0026#39;s amusement.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAfter an initial period of friction due to young Ericu0026#39;s (Schwartz) obnoxious, selfish behavior, they agree to investigate Batesu0026#39;s personal and professional misbehavior in a home-made newspaper, called u0026quot;The Toy.u0026quot;u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003enInfuriated, Bates demonstrates to the two investigators that he owns the people who work for him by ordering his assistant named Morehouse (Beatty) to drop his pants on command (he later screams at another assistant u0026quot;I told you to dance!u0026quot;)u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe iconoclastic rebels who finally take down Bates at a Klan fundraiser are Ericu0026#39;s innocent generation who never knew Jim Crow and the truth-burdened, unemployed black man with nothing to lose because heu0026#39;s already at the bottom.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis movie is filled with enough Pryor minstrelsy to keep movie-going Whitey occupied and chuckling, but is at the same time digging deep into the reality and shame of this countryu0026#39;s racist past, and, indeed, present. And we havenu0026#39;t even addressed the alcoholic indentured man-servant Barkley (Hyde-White) or the Fraulein-who-cries-Mandingo (Leslie-Lyttle.)u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFrom the buying of Brown to the sycophantic staff to the Senator-for-hire Newcomb (consonance: Nuke u0026#39;Em,) US Bates proves that slavery isnu0026#39;t over…people just cost a little more these days.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIn this day when skirting the issue of race and playing it safe at the risk of being offensive has crushed any discussion of racism in this country, itu0026#39;s nice to see that Hollywood once had the balls to make a movie that called a spade a…well, you get it.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOh, and the kid grows up to be a porn star.”