[Bustin' Loose] doesn't aim high. It's a family comedy with a formula plot and a horribly corny ending, and the movie almost succeeds in domesticating Richard Pryor—certainly enough to make some of his fans squirm and mutter under their breath. Yet the whole picture is friendly and good-hearted in ways that are hard to resist. Family comedy is a genre usually left to television and the Disney people, a genre despised and ignored by critics. I found myself enjoying almost all of Bustin' Loose and laughing helplessly more than once….

Looking a little puffy and perhaps a little sadder around the eyes than before his accident, Richard Pryor is as funny as ever—at times incandescently funny. His role here as an unsuccessful burglar and con artist is less a character than a set of comic opportunities, but that's fine with me. Like millions of others, I...