It’s hard to remember now, but there was a time when Clint Eastwood wasn’t the critics’ favorite and Oscar juggernaut he is today. Back in the seventies, his films were labeled as lowbrow and pandering by most critics. This didn’t stop him from being one of the decade’s most reliable stars, and his thrillers and Westerns were solid hits. Still, there comes a time in almost every star’s career when he decides to broaden his appeal, to step outside his usual comfort zone into the sort of movie few people expect from him. For comedians, this is often a serious role designed to show off their dramatic chops. For larger-than-life stars, it’s something more down-to-earth, a more family-friendly vehicle to bring them down to Earth. And for Eastwood, it was playing opposite an orangutan named Clyde in Every Which Way But Loose.
What made Every Which Way But Loose a hit?: Every Which Way But Loose was originally written for Burt Reynolds, but while with Burt in the lead it might have just been another of his good-natured goofs, for Eastwood it was genuine change of pace. One of the tests of a beloved star is whether he can make his usual audiences follow him when he tries something new. And follow Eastwood they did with Every Which Way But Loose, which became one of the biggest hits of his career. The fight scenes were rough-and-tumble enough to satisfy Eastwood’s fan base, but Clyde’s presence in the film helped to soften his character in other ways. Trucker Philo Beddoe is more sensitive than the enigmatic loners he usually played- friendly, uncertain, tentative around women. As Philo says, “I'm not afraid of any man, but when it comes to sharing my feelings with a woman, my stomach turns to jelly.” This no doubt had some appeal for audience members- especially women- who couldn’t relate to his more stoic characters like Harry Callahan.
But let’s not underestimate Clyde’s appeal. Even for those of us who like to think we’re above lowbrow animal humor, there’s something about primates that strikes a universal note in audiences. Perhaps it’s the way they can ape (sorry) traditional human behavior, but in an outsized, cartoonish way. Regardless, Every Which Way But Loose gets a lot of mileage from Clyde acting like a person- drinking beer, giving people the finger, driving, doing his little victory dance when Philo wins a fight. The Clint’n’Clyde combination provided so irresistible to audiences that the film spawned sequel, Any Which Way You Can (also a hit), and a rash of imitations, most obviously the televised trucker-and-primate series BJ and the Bear.
What happened?: Unpretentious entertainments like Every Which Way But Loose aren’t really designed for the long haul. Its ambitions are modest- to make people laugh, to showcase some popular country songs, to have a fist fight every ten minutes or so, and to let people forget their troubles for two hours. Worthy goals all, but not the sort of traits that help a movie to stand the test of time, or which cry out for critical re-evaluation. Today, Every Which Way But Loose feels like it was practically made to be watched late at night on basic cable. It’s the kind of movie that people remember fondly but don’t feel the need to seek out again. 
Does Every Which Way But Loose still work?: Better than expected, but still not quite. Most people only remember the fight scenes and the byplay between Eastwood and Clyde, but the film contains quite a bit of filler to bring it up to a 114 minute running time, and not all of it’s good. Naturally, Philo’s frequent fist fights cause him to run afoul of a number of people, and when he, his friend Orville (Geoffrey Lewis), and Clyde take to the road, they’ve got both a biker gang and a pair of bumbling cops on their tail. It’s hard to say which of the two bands of pursuers are less funny. The cops are pretty superfluous to the plot, and the film could have cut them out entirely without incurring any structural damage. By contrast, we spend more time with the bikers, but it’s not time well-spent. Aside from the moment when Ruth Gordon (playing Orville’s salty-mouthed Ma) hauls out a shotgun and starts blowing up their bikes, the bikers’ scenes mostly feel pointless. In both cases, the scenes distract from the stuff we came for.
Yet other elements of Every Which Way But Loose hold up surprisingly well. Most films would portray Philo’s courting, and subsequent pursuing, of country singer Lynn Halsey-Taylor (played by Eastwood’s then-girlfriend Sondra Locke) as a traditional romance. Yet from the beginning there’s something off about her character. Lynn- who surprisingly isn’t the heiress to the drinking fountain empire- stares too intently and tries too hard to make Philo fall in love with her, and Philo, true to form, falls for it. Watching the film, I thought this might be a fault of the performance, but considering the truth we find out about the character, it ends up making a lot of sense. I was genuinely surprised by the direction the film went with this storyline- not so much because it comes out of nowhere, but because I thought it was too good-natured to go there.
I also liked the ambiguous note the film takes in its climactic fight scene, in which Philo ends up taking a dive against aging legend Tank Murdock (Walter Barnes). It’s rare for a character in this kind of film to not get what he sets out for, but that’s part of the movie’s charm. At the end of the day, Every Which Way But Loose isn’t an especially good movie- it’s too unfocused for that, with too much lame filler that could have easily gotten cut without being missed. But it’s likable enough that I can almost forgive it its missteps. And I think it goes without saying that Clyde is still awesome.
