Richard Pryor was hitting a career peak when he took a starring role in this vehicle, a decent but formulaic and uneven plotline (partially conceived by Pryor himself) for Universal Pictures, elevated into comedy gold thanks to the leading man's sheer brilliance with timing, gesture, nuance, and expression. As he did so often in his career, Pryor plays a small-time crook and con-artist.
Caught trying to pull a ripoff in Philadelphia, he can only avoid prison time by volunteering to help a no-nonsense social worker (Cicely Tyson) drive eight multi-racial children from their shuttered special-education home in Philly in a rickety old bus across the country to a Washington state farm.
Hijinks ensue, including a famous bit with Pryor having to outsmart his way out of a Ku Klux Klan mob scene. There are also some effective moments of pathos involving the damaged and wounded kids—and the material works just as much due to talented child actors and especially Tyson, who provides a fine sort of African Queen Kate Hepburn balance to Pryor's expert mugging along the journey (when Tyson gained praise for Bustin' Loose as the year's best black leading lady in a major American motion picture, they were accompanied by the sheepish realization she was virtually the ONLY black leading lady in a major American motion picture).
Perhaps even more ignoble than the KKK cameo was treatment by another acronym group—the MPAA, who slapped an "R" on the material for its theatrical release, apparently out of sheer dread of the scattered profanity, Pryor's edgy persona and infamous offscreen antics. In fact, the material proceeds in a largely family-friendly manner (many PG-13 pictures today come across as far more offensive).
In his commentary track, cinema historian and Pryor superfan Sergio Mims says Pryor dialed down his dangerous qualities at the behest of Tyson, who was initially reluctant to co-star opposite him. Mims (in between anti-Trump jokes) also informs viewers that the original cut of Bustin' Loose, directed by Oz Scott, benefited immeasurably from reshoots by Michael Schultz (Cooley High), who practically deserves co-directing credit.
Mims provides a non-chronological running Pryor biography, citing his nightmarish childhood, many marriages, and pointing out how, as much Bustin' Loose delivers crowd-pleasing stuff onscreen, the behind-the-scenes travails included Pryor's horrific 1980 brush with death when he set himself on fire via bedside cocaine-freebasing paraphernalia and suffered third-degree burns. With that in mind, the recurring imagery here involving fire (arson, pyromania, Klan torches) are odd touches indeed.