As might be inferred from its name, this is a comedy, or was meant to be. Unfortunately it isn't that funny, even for those of us who have some familiarity with the nuances of urban black life in the America of this time, if only from similar films.
"Cotton Comes To Harlem" is also a thriller, and it would have made better viewing if this aspect had been played up, which would have entailed playing down the comic book violence.
The bottom line is that $87,000 is stolen in a blatant robbery, and law enforcement including two black detectives turn Harlem upside down in pursuit of it. That sum was worth considerably more then than in today's money, but not so much this was the Great Train Robbery of New York State. The cotton reference is not an allusion to de old plantation but to the stolen money somehow ending up in a bale of cotton.
One of the detectives is played by Godfrey Cambridge who just six years later was dead from a heart attack at just 43. This film does not make a good epitaph for him or for anyone else.
"Cotton Comes To Harlem" is also a thriller, and it would have made better viewing if this aspect had been played up, which would have entailed playing down the comic book violence.
The bottom line is that $87,000 is stolen in a blatant robbery, and law enforcement including two black detectives turn Harlem upside down in pursuit of it. That sum was worth considerably more then than in today's money, but not so much this was the Great Train Robbery of New York State. The cotton reference is not an allusion to de old plantation but to the stolen money somehow ending up in a bale of cotton.
One of the detectives is played by Godfrey Cambridge who just six years later was dead from a heart attack at just 43. This film does not make a good epitaph for him or for anyone else.