The first must-see film of the year.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Has to be a mistake to take the title of a sequel from the best remembered line of the originating movie - it's almost an admission that the new film can't come up with a comparable phrase. The portent is true, I fear, as Sydney Poitier reprises his Virgil Tibbs role in another would-be tough, adult, socially aware murder-thriller, but already the law of diminishing returns is applying and so "Mr Tibbs" is inferior to its predecessor in almost every way.In fact it looks and feels like nothing more than a harder-edged TV crime show of the time, no better or worse than say "Ironside", fired as it is by a fine, occasionally quirky Quincy Jones soundtrack and replete with our man's personal problems to flesh out the character. This small-screen feel is exacerbated by the appearance of TV stalwarts Martin Landau, Ed Asner and Anthony Zerbe and it's fair to say the film never rises above the heights of a better than average TV cop-show episode.It's biggest failing of course is the lack of dramatic tension which existed so memorably between Poitier's proud, methodical coloured detective and Rod Steiger's opinionated, redneck workaday sheriff in "...Heat of The Night". Here the film is centred entirely on Poitier and good actor as he is, his unerring instinct and judgement palls as the film progresses, whilst his relationship with friend, do-good minister but murder suspect Landau, never really takes off either. Indeed the central "whodunnit" just isn't strong enough to drive the action on, whilst Tibbs' various interludes with his family slow down the action still further, especially the ho-hum scenes with his "difficult" son.The film is dated of course by its politics and attitudes - no crime in that - but it doggedly fails to fly and in the end stays as little in the memory as even the best remembered episode of any Kojak / Columbo episode you care to mention. Waiting in the wings, of course was a different kind of black detective who was a sex-machine to all the chicks, to take the genre further - can you dig it!

Love may be better the second time around, but movies usually aren't. There are exceptions, but this isn't one of them. Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) is back home and out of that hellhole in Mississippi, but the excitement of In the Heat of the Night is missing.He is doing his thing as a detective; trying to solve a murder where the chief suspect is his preacher friend Logan Sharpe (Martin Landau). The problem is that Gordon Douglas is no Norman Jewison and his direction does not have any magic. The acting is good, but the movie just seems to plod along, switching between Tibbs' home problems (And, I have to mention, his child abuse regarding his son.) and the murder. The fast pace of Jewison's effort is sadly missing.It's a fair murder mystery, but the pace makes it one to skip.

With its kipper ties, flared trousers and proficient - yet dated - music, They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! is perhaps the Poitier film that has aged least gracefully. While its prequel, In The Heat of the Night, was borne from the epitome of cool that was the sixties, here the seventies nurtured this film, which lends it a kitsch value, as well as the air of a t.v. movie. Though these elements - such as seeing the funky theme start up to the tune of Sidney clocking someone with a telephone, or Ed Asner (tv's Lou Grant) "drive" a car to a filmed backdrop - make it endearing and a must-see for a light-hearted Saturday night.A world away from the usual Sidney vehicle we have here a trawl through San Francisco's red light districts, to which the family elements - though the most critically attacked - actually provide effective light. Also unusual is the amount of sexual tone Sidney is here allowed to display. Yet whereas in the former film Poitier was the big town Lieutenant working in small-town Mississippi, here he is on his own territory, thus shaving the film of one of its dimensions. Without Steiger to bounce off, what depth the script provides his character second time around comes from his wife and children, most notably his son. After slapping the boy into submission, Poitier hugs him, mourning the fact that "you're not perfect . and I can't forgive you." Not a perfectly-formed film by any means, this one does improve on repeated viewing, and the majority of ill feeling does seem to be down to disappointment. After all, how does one make a sequel to a movie that's hailed as a classic?

This movie is one of two follow-ups of the blockbuster movie of it's time "In The Heat Of The Night". Sidney poitier plays the serious black Lt. Virgil Tibbs again.The film doesn't deal with racial issues as it's predecessor does. The plot is quite nice and it includes some very good scenes, for instance a car chase and a shootout in a parking garage.A good crime movie.