Sidney Poitier's new film, Uptown Saturday Night, is some less-structured, coherent kind of TV fare—a variety show, perhaps, a black Ed Sullivan Show or Dean Martin Comedy Hour. The plot has to do with an honest but poor man named Steve … who has stolen from him a lottery ticket which, a few days later, wins the million-dollar prize. Needless to say the fellow tries to get his ticket back, persisting in his search even when the ticket turns out to be in the possession of a bunch of gangsters.

Though this might sound like an action film, a thriller of some sort, it isn't. On the contrary, it's a series of character studies, cameos really, which are never anything more than vaguely connected either to the plot or each other. Even in the big chase scenes at the end, where Steve clings to the luggage rack of...