"How've You Bean?" is one of the six short Vitaphone comedies which comprise Roscoe Arbuckle's entire sound-film career. Arbuckle's sudden death occurred less than a week before this film was released. It's not the funniest of Arbuckle's talkies (that's "Buzzin' Around"), but it's not the worst of them either (that would be "Tomalio").
Roscoe attends a fancy dinner party, where he accidentally spills some Mexican jumping beans into the food. (Some amusing animation makes the beans appear to jump.) Nobody notices the Mexican jumping beans when they eat the food, but soon all the hoity-toity rich folk are hopping up and down, and they don't know why. This is the closest Roscoe Arbuckle ever got to Three Stooges humour. (And I'm a Stooges fan.)
Although Arbuckle is nominally the star of this short, he is teamed with a much shorter comedian (Fritz Hubert) who seems to be playing the Stan to Arbuckle's Ollie.
"How've You Bean?" is a silly comedy, completely implausible but still pretty funny. I'll give it 7 out of 10. I shudder to think what Mel Brooks would do with this script. (Let's see, now: Everybody at a party eats lots of beans, and then they all start to ... no, never mind!)
Roscoe attends a fancy dinner party, where he accidentally spills some Mexican jumping beans into the food. (Some amusing animation makes the beans appear to jump.) Nobody notices the Mexican jumping beans when they eat the food, but soon all the hoity-toity rich folk are hopping up and down, and they don't know why. This is the closest Roscoe Arbuckle ever got to Three Stooges humour. (And I'm a Stooges fan.)
Although Arbuckle is nominally the star of this short, he is teamed with a much shorter comedian (Fritz Hubert) who seems to be playing the Stan to Arbuckle's Ollie.
"How've You Bean?" is a silly comedy, completely implausible but still pretty funny. I'll give it 7 out of 10. I shudder to think what Mel Brooks would do with this script. (Let's see, now: Everybody at a party eats lots of beans, and then they all start to ... no, never mind!)