tavm Review of The Time of Their Lives

The Time of Their Lives (1946)

The Time of Their Lives was a nice Abott & Costello picture in which they're not really a team

[7/10 · 5 July 2020]

This is one of two pictures that Bud Abbott and Lou Costello made in which they're not technically a team. This was because they were in an off-screen feud in which they rarely talked to each other when not in public. In this one, Lou is a tinker during the Revolutionary War who gets a letter of recommendation from General George Washington. During this part of the movie, Bud is a butler who has designs on Lou's fiancée. Through some mixup, Lou and Marjorie Reynolds end up dead, become ghosts and stuck in a certain area because they got mistaken for traitors. Flashforward to the 20th century in 1946 and Abbott is now the descendant of that butler he portrayed. His profession is now a psychiatrist. I'll stop there and just say Lou is his usual funny self while Bud gets some good funny stuff as well in the present-day sequences. Since Lou is a ghost and Bud is not, when they're in a scene together, they don't physically communicate with each other though Lou does manage to hit Bud quite a bit without retaliation! Anyway, I'll just now say this was both funny and touching. By the way, this was the first A & C film directed by Charles Barton.