This started off very promising, but quickly turned into a very unfunny and rather ugly comedy where Richard Pryor, as Mr. Every Man, gets the old bamboozala when he accepts a job in Boise Idaho and goes out of his way to buy a beautiful home complete with swimming pool indoors and doors that for some reason are not there when he arrives. It turns out that his horrible neighbor from New Jersey (Randy Quaid) has a brother who happens to own the house next to the one that he bought, and the moving company that he hired decided to go someplace else other than the address he gave them. Certainly some things like this can happen, but the way it is presented become so bizarre and totally ridiculous that after a while the tongue-in-cheek mentality just goes a bit too far.

The lovely Beverly Todd has one very funny moment involving Pryor's swear jar when she finds out where they're moving to, but that's just one rare moment that had me chortling loudly. A guest appearance by Rodney Dangerfield sets the tone for what kind of humor is to follow, and a supporting part by Dana Carvey just becomes ultra obnoxious every time his character changes personalities, and by this time, the film has started outwear it's welcome. It's trying too hard to emulate films like "The Out of Towners", but goes overboard into the metaphorical swimming pool with no water. Pryor was obviously trying something different, and something ended up being missing in the process. The kids are not well-defined characters, and a scene where the two well-behaved boys end up pulling a prank in their new school really makes absolutely no sense like most of the stuff happening. The only place this is moving in like election is into the trash.

I had a lot fonder memories of this movie. I'm finding that rewatching movies from my childhood isn't as rewarding as I thought it'd be. In too many cases I've been ruining the favorable memories I had of certain movies that I watch now and think, "This is trash."

Moving is just slightly above trash. I remembered it being a lot funnier. I barely chuckled watching it again.

Moving is a Murphy's Law movie: anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Arlo Pear (Richard Pryor) loses his prestigious job as a transportation design engineer in New Jersey. He finds a better job but it will require him to move to Boise, Idaho. That's a major undertaking that's already stressful enough if it goes perfectly, so what about if every step of the way it seems like the very forces of nature are against you?

The movers he hires are criminals, the house he buys ends up being a stripped down model, the responsible young man in charge of relocating his car has multiple personality disorder, and he ends up with another lousy neighbor. These comedy of errors were too many. Instead of coming off as funny it came off as frustrating. Plus, I think they wasted their R rating.

They used their R rating for a few foul words when I figured that as much that had gone wrong "there would be blood" or maybe a full nuclear meltdown involving an f-bomb laced tirade worthy of a trophy. Nope. It was really a PG movie with more cuss words than it should have had. Even the resolution at the end was perky, neat, and very child friendly.

I didn't get the payoff I deserved. For all that I had to endure from the shoes of Arlo Pear I wanted a lot more satisfying resolution. I wanted an explosion of sorts with sweet, twisted, hilarious revenge. Yet, the punishments Arlo doled out didn't measure up to the crimes. There's about a pound of flesh out there that needs to be taken and I still want it.

Yes, this movie is not quite what one would expect from Richard Pryor...light on the cussing, a touch of being almost a family comedy, but not quite that tame. In this movie we have a man who is laid off and is offered a very nice job in Boise. Of course, his daughter is rather upset about the prospect of going there, however his wife and twin sons are a bit more supportive. Also happy to see the family go is the crazy neighbor played rather good by Randy Quaid. A neighbor who for some reason must cut his rather small lawn with an industrial mower. Well he has a couple of moving agencies give their appraisal of what it would take to move and he goes with the more expensive as the cheap ones look like recently escaped convicts or something. They find a nice house in Boise where they meet the delightful owners who tell great jokes about how they are going to take everything from the doors to the pool with them. Then he finds just the perfect guy to drive one of his vehicles to the new house. Well everything begins to unravel rather quickly as the movers turn out to be familiar faces he does not want to see, the jokes on them with the new house, and the driver of the car has a bit of a mental problem. So all in all a funny movie, a few of the jokes miss the marks such as the giving the wrong finger thing, however most are pretty good like how the twin sons run track. So for a rather light Richard Pryor comedy that still has some good laughs, give this movie a try.