Maids a la Mode

Maids a la Mode (1933)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A seamstress (Zasu Pitts) and her model buddy (Thelma Todd) are fired by their boss (Billy Gilbert) after a fashion show goes horribly wrong. The two decide to take a couple of his dresses and go to a party but soon they're shocked to see the boss there as well. I've seen eight or nine of these Todd-Pitts shorts and I'm clearly not a fan. They seem to range from fair to bad and this one here is one of the weakest and I'm still not sure if anyone was even attempting to make this thing funny. The entire opening bit with the girls messing up the show was just one bad joke after another. The timing of all of this was so off that you couldn't help but wonder what everyone was doing and there's a shot of Gilbert falling on some pins where the "edit" is so obvious that you can't help but roll your eyes because the likes of Georges Melies was doing more impressive stuff thirty-years earlier than what's on display here. The party sequence is just as weak because once again we get no laughs and the entire running jokes of Pitts dress coming apart just isn't funny. Once again Pitts and Todd have no chemistry together and by the end I couldn't wait for this one to be over.