Until a few years ago, I've kept far away from Laurel & Hardy's notoriously poor 1940s vehicles produced by Twentieth-Century Fox; now that I've watched them all (and only NOTHING BUT TROUBLE [1944], made at MGM, remains from this sorry final period of the greatest comedy team in cinema history), I can say that this one is certainly the weakest of the lot!
There is very little typical material for the stars who, in any case, look tired and visibly disinterested throughout; that said, it's mercifully short and, therefore, not exactly painful to watch - as was the case with, say, UTOPIA (1951), an embarrassing mess that, regrettably, proved to be their cinematic swan-song - but, at the end of the day, it's not the boys' usually endearing and irresistible routines that are remembered, if at all, but rather the scenes involving an elderly magician that goes by the unlikely name of Dante...not to mention the dubious novelty of watching Elisha Cook Jr. in drag! To add insult to injury, the film's title is a ludicrous misnomer!!
There is very little typical material for the stars who, in any case, look tired and visibly disinterested throughout; that said, it's mercifully short and, therefore, not exactly painful to watch - as was the case with, say, UTOPIA (1951), an embarrassing mess that, regrettably, proved to be their cinematic swan-song - but, at the end of the day, it's not the boys' usually endearing and irresistible routines that are remembered, if at all, but rather the scenes involving an elderly magician that goes by the unlikely name of Dante...not to mention the dubious novelty of watching Elisha Cook Jr. in drag! To add insult to injury, the film's title is a ludicrous misnomer!!