“Any Which Way You Can” is the lousy follow-up to the mediocre original film “Every Which Way But Loose”. Although the film itself isn’t really that much worse than the original, it sadly requires you see have seen the original so that knocks it down even further because you have to watch the first to even try to understand this movie.

In “Any Which Way You Can”, Clint Eastwood (“Hang ‘Em High”, “Kelly’s Heroes”) returns as trucker Philo Beddoe with his orangutan Clyde. Philo gets offered a lot of money to fight but turns it down but finds himself forced into a corner. He then has to fight in what turns into mixture between an excessively tedious piece of action and a poor copy of “It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World”.

Clint Eastwood isn’t really any better or any worse than he was in the first film. Very few laughs come from Clyde this time as I felt they’d done a lot of the jokes in the first film and an orangutan doing silly stuff can get dull after a while. Nobody else brings anything worthwhile to the table so you can pretty much give up on the cast.

“Any Which Way You Can” is basically the second act as the first film had one of the most miserable endings I’ve ever seen so it’s a real rip-off as you buy both just to see one story really. “Any Which Way You Can” just like the first is too mature for children and is hardly a great ‘guy’ film so I highly recommend you skip it because it is less funny than the first film, which wasn’t funny either and has one of the most drawn-out fight scenes I’ve ever witnessed so I say avoid this picture any which way you can.