Night Shift

Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Henry Winkler, Michael Keaton, Shelley Long
Genre: Comedy 1982
Running time: 106 mins. 
Rating:★★★

Chuck Lumley is a nice, unassuming man. His fear of life is the primary reason he took a job as a morgue attendant rather than stay in his previous high stress job on Wall Street, despite having a natural aptitude in finance and business. He is dismayed to learn that he has been reassigned to the night shift at the morgue, if only because it will take away time available to spend with his straight-laced but neurotic fiancée, Charlotte Koogle. He is even more dismayed when he meets his new night shift colleague, William Blazejowski - who calls himself Billy Blaze - a manic, non-stop talking man, who is always trying to come up with get rich quick schemes, which are mostly hair-brained ideas. After Chuck befriends his neighbor, a good-natured hooker named Belinda Keaton, he learns that Belinda's former pimp was murdered, leaving her and many of her hooker friends pimp-less and thus unprotected by the unpredictability of their johns. From this knowledge, Billy sprouts the latest germ of a scheme: that he and Chuck, in their unsupervised state, should act as pimps - or what Billy calls love brokers - for Belinda and her friends during their night shift at the morgue. Chuck eventually agrees, if only because of his affection for Belinda, but he expands on that idea into a full-fledged pseudo-legitimate business for all their collective benefit. The questions become if this business is sustainable in light of the fact of everything about it being against Chuck's general nature, and if he will be able to balance his growing feelings for Belinda against having a personal relationship with a hooker.

With a director like Ron Howard, you know the movie is going to well-thought out, brilliantly casted, and fantastic! Its the eighties, so you know Michael Keaton was still in his prime and comedically balances Henry Winkler's straight man character beautifully. Shelley Long is surprisingly un-annoying in this film. And how Keaton's character convinces Winkler's character is hysterical!