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Michael Schulz’s Car Wash (1976) needn’t concern itself with the rises and falls of a conventional narrative; its big, charming ensemble — made up of characters whose lives are, for now, at a standstill — does plenty to get it somewhere. The movie spans from morning till night and takes place entirely at a Los Angeles car-washing business, Dee-Luxe Car Wash, owned by a middle-aged, cigar-chomping white guy who goes by Mr. B (Sully Boyar) who prefers to keep things analogue. (His primary competitor down the street, meanwhile, has adopted the sort of new, state-of-the-art car-washing technology threatening to put Dee-Luxe out of business.)

Nearly all of Dee-Luxe’s employees are young Black and brown men. Some are here indefinitely; others hope the job will be a pit stop just ahead of bigger and better things, like twin brothers Floyd and Lloyd (Darrow Igus and DeWayne Jessie), musicians just trying to make it through the shift before their audition with an agent later, and Abdullah (Bill Duke), who’s recently converted to Islam and would rather focus on activism.

Nearly everyone gets their own comic showcase in the movie, whether related to a personal hang-up or whatever woes the day brings; Car Wash is funniest in the handful of moments where it opts for a longer set piece, like when a hoity-toity Beverly Hills housewife brings by her car, whose passenger is his her young son who won’t stop vomiting, for a scrub-down, or when a few of the wash’s employees convince themselves that a guy with unkempt hair and a long trench coat is almost certainly the infamous “pop bottle bomber” that’s been terrorizing Los Angeles with growing frequency. Richard Pryor memorably stops by, too, as a fittingly vainglorious televangelist in a cream-colored, white-bowed suit who so much sucks all the air off the property that he even has a couple of women with him, played by the Pointer Sisters, who will at one point perform a dance number.

Car Wash’s moments of well-executed slapstick ultimately don’t dominate the movie; this is more of a life-is-funny comedy where it isn’t unusual for amusement to be steady but where it also isn’t unusual for waves of despair to suddenly come crashing and not feel abrupt. (The ending has a just-right bittersweetness.) The tonal command of screenwriter Joel Schumacher, a few years away from what would shape up to be a successful directing career, is braced by the film’s set of largely affable actors. There’s no one better here than Antonio Fargas, playing a trans woman who refuses conformity — who refuses to let the people who treat her without humanity to get the final word.