Any Which Way You Can

Any Which Way You Can is a loose, lighthearted Eastwood vehicle aimed at the good-timey sector of this actor's audience. The real star of this series is Clyde the orangutan, and it looks as if Clyde has another hit on his hairy hands. Read full review

A generous entertainment of its kind, Any Which Way mixes plentiful portions of gauche, robust action and comedy with frequent musical interludes. [17 Dec 1980, p.E1]

The movie is less a sequel to the original, in fact, than it is a remake - a more energetic, more absurd and possibly more entertaining remake. [17 Dec 1980]

The 1980 sequel to Every Which Way but Loose, and a better film—smoother, more controlled, with more time for the casual elucidation of place and character. Though it's a loud, vulgar, and occasionally brutal comedy, it never succumbs to the fashion for facetiousness: Clint Eastwood always takes his work seriously, even in a relatively impersonal project like this, and there are moments of moving emotional candor amid the slapstick, flashes on loneliness, forgiveness, and loyalty. Read full review

Any Which Way You Can is not a very good movie, but it's hard not to feel a grudging affection for it. Where else, in the space of 115 minutes, can you find a country & western road picture with two fights, a bald motorcycle gang, the Mafia, a love story, a pickup truck, a tow truck, Fats Domino, a foul-mouthed octogenarian, an oversexed orangutan and a contest for the bare knuckle championship of the world? Read full review

A much gentler follow-up to the original film, Any Which Way You Can takes the time to humanize the characters, and shows them as passionate human beings instead of the fighting machines they were in the first film. Among the film's many funny moments is a parallel seduction sequence showing Philo and Lynne in one motel room, while Clyde puts the moves on a female orangutan next door. Read full review

About the dumbest movie Clint Eastwood ever put his name to. Read full review

Any Which Way You Can is a benign continuation of Every Which Way But Loose. Original ape from Loose was not available to Eastwood here, but substitute performs heroically. Read full review

This sequel to his earlier hit, Every Which Way But Loose, delivers exactly what it promises, namely lots of fistfights, car chases, booze, broads and country music, plus a dollop of the old Eastwood bootstrap philosophy ("Handouts are what you get from the government. A hand-up is what you get from your friends"). As for the comedy, it starts out with Clyde the orangutan defecating in squad cars, and goes downhill from there. [19 Dec 1980, p.23]

Eastwood at his least appealing in a poor sequel to the already disappointing redneck comedy of Every Which Way But Loose. The story is similarly thin - trucker Eastwood, accompanied by his orang-utan buddy Clyde, gets involved in repetitive brawls with sundry unsavoury brutes - while the humour is far too broad and the direction plodding. Read full review