Street Smart (1987) Retrospective / Review 

I remember seeing this movie when I was a kid. Morgan Freeman's performance scared the **** outta me, lol. So glad that Freeman did not allow Hollywood to typecast him in these roles. A testament to his talent and business savvy.

When it came out I listed it as ‘overlooked and under-rated’ on my top ten poster in my video store and it became a top renter, so much so that the video tape wore out! Brilliant!

Thanks for doing this retrospective. One of my most favorite Morgan Freeman movies. His performance is nothing short of riveting

Morgan Freeman took a frequently stereotyped role and made it into a genuine character. Brilliant indeed. One of Cannon's few genuinely, unironically good films.

I **like** Superman IV as a nostalgic pleasure, but hindsight being 20/20, after Cannon screwed this film over and cut the budget of Superman IV, Christopher Reeve should have lawyered up and walked away.

8:08 but couldn't have they sold the all of the Armani items after the movie to collectors and made a profit on the whole lot? I've been wondering stuff like that lately

Retrospect "Necessary Roughness" please kind sir?!

You finally did it Ollie!

Morgan should have been the villain of Superman 3 and 4.

I have noticed that there hasn't been a review on the movie Small Soldiers yet,that would be a good retrospective.

Great review - Street Smart felt like an interesting failure to me. Freeman is undoubtedly magnificent in it, Reeve feels a bit out of place - I get that he was passionate about the film, but he just feels wrong for the role, he always just feels too likeable for the slimy character he's playing and you find yourself just disappointed by his deceitful actions, rather than being engrossed by them. Definitely agree that he would have been wiser to stick to some of the more commercial roles offered to him and that maybe if he'd done that he could have segued into more dramatic roles.

21:03 ghostbusters

Chris was good this is underrated but could be made better now Morgan stunning in this Chris just dosent make a effort enough left in his shadow ,and should of done more action films, his only good guy role was superman he did make wrong choices needed new management can see how it's a great show reel for Morgan

Great film...reeve was also great in deathtrap.

ooh, haven't seen this movie in decades. Now, the age old question: watch it again before the retrospective.... or after? AH! STOP THE INSANITY!

How can you mention Andre Gregory but not mention My Dinner With Andre? Lol Now you owe us a My Dinner With Andre retrospective

ah yes, the 80s. the black man is the villain, blatant sexism all throughout.... that's how they rolled back then.

What an underrated gem!!! Shame they messed up the marketing on this one.

The first time I saw the poster for Street Smart, I was about 10 years old and thought it was Superman singing karaoke and Morgan Freeman egging him on by saying "Right on, brotha! Right on!" Oh, how the mind of a 10 year works! 😁😁😉

I forgot just how TALL Reeve was. Weirdly you don’t really notice it in the Superman movies, but here when he’s playing a normal character it’s unmistakable.

Coincidentally Kathy Baker was also in another early Morgan Freeman film: Clean and Sober starring a pre-Batman Michael Keaton.

Its weird seeing morgan freeman aggressive like that

chris as the lead in running man would have been excellent.

I always think Reeve needed some stubble or a beard to take him away from looking so much visually like Superman. The role of Superman defined him and it is hard to see anyone else but that character no matter what he is playing. If I was him I'd have been growing a beard like there was no tomorrow. It would be like "This is my serious actor face".

It sucks Chris lived in the time when actors still got stereotyped. He was an amazing stage actor, and aside from Superman had no real interest doing action movies. Many of his other films are very good. Outstanding actor, RIP

The one good thing to come out of Superman 4: The Quest for Peace.

Freeman was so good in this. He should've played more villains.

Great, important pick. Without Reeve, _Superman IV,_ & _Street Smart_ there'd be no _Lean On Me,_ no _Unforgiven,_ no _Se7en,_ no _Shawshank,_ no Lucius Fox. It's difficult to articulate how radical it was that Easy Reader from _Electric Company_ - a PBS kids show - would break through as a top dramatic film actor. Freeman landed like a lightning bolt in '87 with Fast Black, one of the best performances of the decade. Thanks, _Superman IV._

Hugely underated film. I actually never heard of it until I watched your old review of Superman IV. I tracked it down afterwards and thought it was great. Keep up the great work Oliver.

If we ever had to thank Superman 4 for is for this film and Morgan Freeman.

I feel that this film is similar to Primal Fear with Richard Gere. You an A list star which suddenly the supporting actor like Edward Norton steals the show.

I think Christopher Reeve should have walked away from the “Superman” role after the first two movies. That might have saved him from typecasting, if that was a problem.

You should do John Carpenter's Elvis & Gremlins 2 - The New Batch

Can we all take a moment to appreciate the soundtrack and audio design for this video? The song selection was great and then there's the sound effects and ambient sounds to add richness to compliment the excellent recording work. Then to show off he created a whole drum and bass track for the sake of a pun! Typically I only really notice sound in RU-vid videos when it's obvious bad or hard to hear. Alex is legit making mini movies now.

20:20 “3 HOT GIRLS” lol straight n to the point. I like it

Can’t wait for reviews of DeathTrap and his two collaborations with Merchant-Ivory!

Reeves struggled to break away from his goody two-shoes persona. In Street Smart, despite his character's sketchy antics, he comes off as nice at core (and also bland), as a result you spend the whole film waiting for his Road to Damascus moment.

I drank Yoo-Hoo’s for a straight year after watching this film. Such a great performance and screenplay by all.

Christopher Reeve saying " Time Square pimp" feels off.

I never seen or heard of Street Smart before, but I want to check it out since this was the film that jump started Morgan Freeman's career.

Great as always. I remember first hearing about this movie when you reviewed "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace", I got intrigued and years later I came across the DVD at my local Winn-Dixie of all places. I did give the movie a watch and I thought it was pretty good. It is fascinating seeing Christopher Reeve playing a character who isn't "Superman", and here he didn't disappoint in my opinion. Of course I can't leave off Morgan Freeman, he is great in everything he does, and this is no exception.

I know nothing about this movie. All the more reason to watch this retrospective

Me: hi Morgan Freeman! *Young morgan takes a knife out! Me: but morgan why.... 😢

Damn Morgan Freeman looked old in the 1980s , I think he has been old his whole life.

That time Lucius Fox beat up Superman.

It's a shame Christopher Reeve had a hard time finding scripts he really liked, but when he did like them, the movies were usually financially unsuccessful. Interestingly, he turned down a lot of movies which became well known because he felt he wasn't right for them like Romancing The Stone, Lethal Weapon, American Gigolo, Fatal Attraction, Splash, and Body Heat

I just noticed that, at least to me, Mimi Rogers & Kathy Baker look a little bit alike in this film; I guess Reve's Jonathan Fisher had a type!

It wouldn't be a Oliver Harper video without mentioning Superman

Kathy Baker i remember her from Edward Scissorhands and 13 Going On 3O , The GlassHouse also those Jesse Stone tv movies .

I remember seeing the poster for this in my little video store.. It was next Light of Day with Michael J Fox..

The Somewhere in Time retrospective introduced me to that incredible film and now I am going to see this. Great Content!

Whaaaat?! No Spectrum or GBA tie-in games?!

Oliver Harper, have you considered covering the movie The Fugitive from 1993? It's pretty straightforward story but really well executed, maybe Harrison Fords' best film, IMO

Music at the end of this video sounds like level music from streets of rage.

Superman getting beat up by Driving Miss Daisy the Movie

I wondered what it would have been like if Clark Kent moved to Gotham instead of Metropolis. Now I know

I love the retrospectives on the 80's movies and hopefully one day you will make one on NEAR DARK. Here's a few other films I'd love to see get retrospectives, SILVER BULLET LADY IN WHITE THE GATE THE HITCHER FROM BEYOND

Perhaps it was Reeve's floundering career that made him decided to take a starring part in 'The Theater Of The Real'. His paralysis was acting. Chris was never really paralyzed and also he's not dead.

I would love to see retroespective reviews on "Johnny Handsome", "Year of the dragon" and "White sands".

The best Batman V Superman was a movie called Speechless with Michael Keaton & Christopher Reeve.

I had no idea this movie existed. I'll absolutely give it a go. Thank you!

I've been waiting for this review. This film needs more recognition. My favorite Christopher Reeves film, more people need to check this one out.

I wonder how Chris would have done as Ted Bundy.

Schatzberg is a tremendously underrated filmmaker. Big fan of his very underseen feature REUNION scripted by Harold Pinter (who Schatzberg photographed when he worked at Vanity Fair)

This movie is basically one giant deleted scene from Superman II when he lost his powers 😆

Watched it for the first time tonight. Actually really well written and presented, and without this film, Morgan Freeman wouldn’t be asking businessmen if they got the memo. Kinda a shame how Cannon handled Superman IV, wasn’t it…

I feel that 1987 was a good year for film (This film, "Full Metal Jacket", "Fatal Attraction", "The Big Easy", "Lethal Weapon", "The Lost Boys", "Dead of Winter", "Tin Men", "Dragnet", and many more are some of my personal favorites), and it probably was one of the more gritter years in terms of film content in the 1980s, although I think that the perception of 80's films having a lot of fluff is overblown (it simply wasn't a decade like the 1970s and having so many films with strong messages, which viewers were sort of burned out on). Actually, my favorite decade of film is the 1970s, as I think it's the best, considering the films and the fact that the ratings system was used the entire decade, along with directors having a ton of creative control over their artistic vision. Still, I love those 80's as well!

Hey Oliver Would you do a review / commentary on the comedy Switching Channels with Christopher Reeve, Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner ???

It is t easy, these ‘current’ actors are trapped in scifi and fantasy. Whenever they reach outside of it, their films fail.miserably. Those marvel amd star wars people are doomed. Very poor choice for actors who are serious about their work

According to Jennifer Pryor, Richard Pryor brought Dave Freeman's script to Reeve's attention on the set of Superman III because he wanted to play Fast Black opposite Reeve & also felt the movie would catch the attention of the Academy come awards season however pre-accident Reeve could be very ruthless, he bought the scripts option but point blank refused to even talk to Pryors Indigo Pictures wich hurt Pryor, Reeve used the negative reception towards Superman III & said audiences wouldn't accept him & Pryor on screen again but in private Reeve confessed to the movies original director Joseph Zito (later replaced by Jerry Shatzberg) that he was scared that Pryor would upstage him & his performance would be buried wich would happen eventually anyway when Morgan Freeman was cast

Great film, just rewatched it. Not perfect but I still love it. Fast Black's demise, while tidy, still packs a serious wallop. Not to take anything away from Christopher Reeve, who I always adore, but Morgan Freeman, what a performance. I love André Gregory in that role, hard disagree about him not suiting the film, I felt he was perfect comic relief. Definitely would have been more successful in '77 rather than '87. Anyway, thanks for the vid!

I saw this film at the theaters, and it was not far-fetched. I knew guys like Fast Black but instead of being pimps, they were drug dealers in NYC with that same Bipolar paranoia, Morgans presence scared the hell out of me. Also, I could relate to this film being a photographer/videographer who had been subpoenaed by an ADA once in 2000 for new footage I sold to NBC Dateline and Geraldo's show when it was on MSNBC and the other recently in 2019 for an Instagram post of murder aftermath I took photos of.

Wow Oliver, reviewing a drama. Hope you don't make a habit of this because I prefer the "genre" movies and TV shows that you've done. BTW, Planet of the Apes (1968), Logan's Run (1976), Dracula (1979), Dragonslayer (1981), Clash of the Titans (1981), Fright Night (1985), House (1986), and Alien Nation (1988), are some films missing from your RR's list as are Space 1999, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century are a few shows that I hope are on your list some time in the future...

Great seeing Street Smart get a proper nod here--far too few people know of it (no thanks to Cannon Films' lousy promotion and shitty poster design.) I love seeing Reeve do something different (damn, The Running Man would have been PERFECT for him) and Freeman is just phenomenal, a complete 180 degree turn from being Easy Reader, Mel Mounds, and Marcello (Rita Moreno yelling "MARCELLO!!") on The Electric Company.

The 1980s was a prolific time for originality in Hollywood. The movies were good; the producers were very picky about putting their money into productions that audiences wanted to see; actors were actors, not political activists. Back then hardly any producer was re-making anything. They didn't need to. Pretty much every year was a blockbuster year for Hollywood, and 1987 was a particularly tough year for a dramatic movie (even one starring Christopher Reeves) when the competition included: The Untouchables, Predator, Lethal Weapon, Dirty Dancing, Hellraiser, Fatal Attraction, Lost Boys... IMO, this movie was a few years too soon. Had it been released in the mid to late 1990s with a Hip-Hop/New Jack Swing soundtrack it would have been a runaway hit. This movie is one the better Hollywood productions that received very little real backing from the production company. Christopher Reeve was a big star at the time, and he should have shopped it around more. But maybe if he had waited too long he wouldn't have gotten Freeman to play the part or the movie might not have been made at all. I don't like Morgan Freeman's newfound aggressive political activism, but I will give him his due. The dude is SAVAGE in this movie. He's played countless different roles since but this was most definitely one of his best. Even though he got 6th billing he totally stole the spotlight from Christopher Reeve, which brings me to another point. Freeman played the villain so well in this movie that his character scared the crap outta me. It makes absolutely no sense that Hollywood kept casting him as the good guy in almost everything he's done since. He makes a much more interesting bad guy. A shame that this movie flopped at the box office. Although I'm not generally a fan of re-makes, it would be interesting if they remade it today and kept to its original form. I wondered about this, but then figured it wouldn't work in today's WOKE Hollywood. They would never greenlight a script like this because having a smart white man play the lead role wouldn't fit their narrative. Reeve's character would be gender-swapped or tapered down to be weak. Then it would be offensive to make a movie about a black Pimp/drug dealer because that would be racist. Then it would be offensive to make a movie about streetwalkers because that would be toxic masculinity. Then they would force the obligatory LBGTQ stuff into the script... And we'd get a boring movie that would do even worse at the box office than the original. Which brings me to the reason why I commented on this movie and why I give it 5 stars out of five: Hollywood simply doesn't make good movies like this one anymore. Because of the Twitter mobs and Cancel Culture some of the best things are gone from our culture forever. Its nice that channels like this exist, to remind people of what good entertainment is. I'm old school, so I have a giant DVD collection of the best Hollywood movies, from the 1990s going all the way back to the old B&W classics. (Ok, there are a few from 2000 to mid 2010s), but pretty much nothing from the past 6 years. Streetsmart is on my shelf. It will always be one of my favorites.

Can you do one of "the rock" with nic cage and sean connery plz

EASY READER gone BAD? A PIMP? NOT the same Electric Company character!!!😢 The SAD part is NYC, Times Square WAS MUCH WORST. NYC was a 💩hole back then.

Oliver can you please review the Spawn movie from 1997!? I'm a huge Spawn fan and August is right around the corner which was the month of the movies release.. furthermore it's a lot of hype surrounding the character since breaking the Guinness record 2 years ago for longest running independent comic and being featured as a playable character in Mortal Kombat 11...with talks of a new movie, a brand new multiverse comic series that just launched, and the character itself approaching its 30th anniversary it's a good a time as ever to be a Spawn fan and get on the hype train. Whether you love the movie or hate it without question its worthy of discussion and I always enjoy hearing your reviews and would love to hear your thoughts on the 97 cult classic, thank you for your work!💪🤙

I think the biggest problem is pairing him alongside undiscovered-gem Morgan Freeman at that time. But I have always thought he would've been great in a 'Lethal-Weapon'- style buddy-cop movie... =)

Always loved Shawshank, I didn't even know about this movie until a week ago. Had to see it, and watched it online. Loved the movie, Freeman was as great in this as he was as Red. Its usually a type of role he doesn't play, but man he could do it all. Ending didn't make sense because no way would Darlene have given money to Reggie to set him up knowing she's dead if Black finds out. Of course they needed a way to end it. Starts off almost like a comedy and gets dark fast, but good movie.

christopher reeve could have played a great batman too!

Please review "Dodgeball a true Underdog Story". Another underrated gem:)

14:50 ive never seen it but Im about to. Im trying to digest as much of Christopher Reeve’s work as possible.

Jesus, was Morgan Freeman _ever_ young?

*Pimp hand: The movie*

I feel Oliver has really dropped the ball here by failing to mention the Spectrum game "Street Smart 128k"...

Oh, I am pleasantly surprised seeing this pop up. I liked that movie very much. Morgan Freeman has played sleazy characters before, but here he is quite scary and violent. He is of course the highlight, but the rest of the cast are great as well. I will enjoy this review.

Never heard of this one

Good film with some excellent performances. Reeve's character certainly needed to be fuller, more of a loveable down & out type of character.

When I saw this movie; that is Easy Reader from Electric Company? Mind blown.

Could you please make a retrospective of the movie "Flesh and Blood"? I am sure it has been requested countless of times but it would tick about every box and it's such an underrated movie.

Thank you very much for taking this on, I always wondered about it.

Wow 4 million, no one Reeves agreed to di another Superman. That was huge back then, maybe not now for an actor, but back then it was.

Can you review the 1992 movie "Nemesis " with Oliver gruner

Money Talks with Chris Tucker and Charlie Sheen looks like the remake based on the trailer… just saying

2:40

Its a shame to learn that Christopher Reeve a literal childhood hero of mine....was actually quite a prick

I saw this movie sometime ago and i gotta say if morgan freeman wasnt an actor. I think he would've been a serial killer

Nice!! Do some more 80s films like this, I’m gunna watch this tomorrow!

Just watched it on prime. Great film. Great acting by Reeve and Freeman!