Having just seen "The Noose Hangs High" this movie fell pretty flat by comparison. The first instinct is to blame MGM but then A&C's "Rio Rita" was from MGM and was intensely funny.
The problems lie in the continual bad pacing created by trying to combine Bud and Lou's comedy with the lavish MGM musical. The two just don't mix. Problem #2 is that good comedy need be tied to real life, and nobody at MGM bothered to figure out where exactly the story is set. Nothing has even a fictional or slapstick truth to it.
One of the great vaudeville comedy routines also fails. It's done elsewhere by Abbott and Costello as the "Niagara Falls! slowly I turned, step by step...." routine. Herein it's done with another name, is less funny, and is repeated 9 times till we're sick of it.
Even Abbott and Costello have an off-day. Skip this one and instead choose one of their great comedies from Universal. Just as Universal "owned" horror movies, they also knew how to let these guys be funny.
The problems lie in the continual bad pacing created by trying to combine Bud and Lou's comedy with the lavish MGM musical. The two just don't mix. Problem #2 is that good comedy need be tied to real life, and nobody at MGM bothered to figure out where exactly the story is set. Nothing has even a fictional or slapstick truth to it.
One of the great vaudeville comedy routines also fails. It's done elsewhere by Abbott and Costello as the "Niagara Falls! slowly I turned, step by step...." routine. Herein it's done with another name, is less funny, and is repeated 9 times till we're sick of it.
Even Abbott and Costello have an off-day. Skip this one and instead choose one of their great comedies from Universal. Just as Universal "owned" horror movies, they also knew how to let these guys be funny.