Uphill All the Way Reviews

Imagine a sketch from the television show "Hee-Haw" expanded to an hour and a half and you'll have UPHILL ALL THE WAY, a painfully unfunny cornball-comedy chase featuring country stars Roy Clark and Mel Tillis. Ben Hooker (Clark) and Booger Skaggs (Tillis) are a pair of bungling con men, roving through the Texas countryside in the early 1900s. After losing their money in a card game, Hooker and Skaggs go to a local bank to apply for a loan. Because they're carrying a shotgun, they're mistaken for bank robbers. This mistaken identity gag builds as the two con men steal a car from a traveling salesman, then heist the uniforms and horses from two unwitting soldiers. In the meantime, the sheriff (Burl Ives) and the increasingly large group of unintended victims pile into a car and begin pursuit. UPHILL ALL THE WAY is wholly predictable, unfolding in a connect-the-dots manner that can be deciphered long before events come to an end. Clark and Tillis are amiable, as is the majority of the cast, but their meager acting abilities don't stretch through a feature-length film. Essentially, this is a one-joke comedy with the same gag repeated over and over and over. Though competently handled in the technical department, the film is a crashing bore.