How've You Bean?

"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!)

How've You Bean? (1933)

** (out of 4)

The third of six two-reelers that Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle made for Vitaphone. This one here was released just a few days after the comedian died of a heart attack just hours after signing a contact to make a feature-length film. The movie has Arbuckle and Fritz Hubert playing grocery store owners who are having their grand opening and don't understand why people are taking food without paying for it. The second half of the film has them at a wedding for their best friend where they accidentally feed people Mexican jumping beans. HOW'VE YOU BEAN? is certainly the weakest in the series up to this point as there just isn't enough story here and there's certainly not enough laughs to keep you entertained throughout the 20-minute running time. What's worse is the fact that what laughs there are just aren't strong enough to make the movie worth watching so this here is mainly just going to appeal to fans of Arbuckle who want to see everything he did. The first portion in the grocery store has one funny sequence and it's when a customer gets molasses in his hat, which he then can't get off of his head. The second portion of the film deals with some animated jumping beans but this contains no laughs. Arbuckle is charming as always but his supporting player Hubert just doesn't add anything.

This is another of Fatty Arbuckle's talkie shorts. Here, he's a grocer who is puzzled why his customers are grabbing everything without paying! Watch this to find out. Then, he and his friend go to another friend's wedding where one of the food items are Mexican jumping beans. I'll stop there and just say this was funny from beginning to end. So that's a high recommendation for How've You Bean?

It isn't easy to track down copies of the six Vitaphone shorts Roscoe Arbuckle made in the early '30s, but classic comedy fans will find the search worthwhile. The shorts vary a bit in quality, but all are enjoyable, and each offers its own points of interest. One in particular (Buzzin' Around) is as much fun as Arbuckle's best silent comedies from the 'teens. How've You Bean? falls somewhere in the middle range, depending on how much you enjoy low comedy. But then again, if you don't care for low comedy you should steer clear of Roscoe Arbuckle anyhow.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this short is the seeming attempt to promote Arbuckle and his sidekick as a Laurel & Hardy-style team. Roscoe, as a dimwitted grocer named Abner, executes several sliding falls with the elephantine grace of Oliver Hardy, while his partner Willie (Fritz Hubert) plays the blank-eyed Stan figure, at one point even scratching his hair to think a la Stanley. Laurel & Hardy were at the peak of their success at this time, while Arbuckle was struggling to recover his popularity after years of post-scandal exile, so it made sense to ease Roscoe back into public view as another lovable if accident-prone fat man, like Ollie. Still, the unhappy legacy of the 1921 sex scandal lingers in subtle ways: in his six Vitaphone shorts Arbuckle is never paired off romantically with a leading lady (although there's a hint of flirtation in one of the last films, In the Dough), which might also explain the attempt to link him with a male sidekick here, or with a small boy in the first short, Hey Pop!

At any rate, this comedy offers the chance to see an older Arbuckle dust off some of his grocery store gags and then disrupt a wedding party of "swells." Mexican jumping beans are inadvertently served, and soon of course the guests are hopping up and down uncontrollably. Everything happens pretty much the way it would have in a Keystone comedy of 1915, except we can hear the clunks and cries when people fall. Roscoe's mellow voice recorded nicely, but clever dialog was never intended to be the strong suit of his Vitaphone shorts: this is good old slapstick, served up straight. The man just wanted the opportunity to work again, and the success of this series proved that audiences were willing to welcome him back. Warner Brothers planned to put Roscoe Arbuckle in a series of feature films next. One wonders what sort of features he would have made if he hadn't died suddenly in the summer of 1933, around the time How've You Bean? was released.

Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle would be a funny and clever comedian but his heyday was certainly long before he made a few shorts for Vitaphone in the early 1930s. Still, despite this, a few (such as "Hey Pop!") were very funny...and many others were definitely NOT. In the case of "How've You Bean" the film isn't bad...it's terrible! It makes you wonder who the comedy writers were....morticians or monkeys? It's a completely unfunny and even embarrassingly bad film...with nothing to recommend it.

The film begins with Abner (Arbuckle) and his friend, Willie (Fritz Hubert) opening a grocery store. All sorts of mayhem ensues but it's not funny...such as a senseless flour fight.

In the next scene, the pair go to a friend's wedding and the film manages to get worse. Mexican Jumping Beans get mixed up in a big batch of beans for the wedding rehearsal dinner...which gets the audience to ask MANY questions. Who serves plates of beans to a fancy dress rehearsal?! How can the two friends have table manners like this and how is this funny?! How can the Mexican Jumping Beans SURVIVE being cooked and start jumping?! And, who thinks any of this is funny when badly animated beans start bounding about??!! It defies my ability to understand how the film could be this unfunny..but it's about as funny as diaper rash.