Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling

Good movies can take us to faraway places; great movies usually take us inside the human mind. "Jo Jo Dancer" is a great confessional movie.

Like his stand-up, Pryor deftly mixes humor and tragedy, subtly tweaking familiar tales from his routines.

This isn’t a heartfelt amateur night, but a film by an artist whose art has become his life.

Pryor's direction is better than the script, and singers Eckstine and McRae make nice dramatic debuts under his firm hand.

Jo Jo Dancer is a far from great movie. However, there's something revivifying about seeing Mr. Pryor take this flyer in writing, directing and acting in his own work.

As a moviemaker, [Pryor's] a novice presenting us with clumps of unformed experience. It isn't even raw; the juice has been drained away.

You have the feeling that Pryor had aimed for a somber, almost melancholy story, redeemed only by Jo Jo's strength of will at the very last moment. (He says as much in a recent magazine interview.) But the film has been cranked up to give it the maximum laughs and, in the process, has lost its center.