Why Detectives Go Wrong

Watching Poodles Hanneford on the screen always makes me think of Chaplin's THE CIRCUS in which he attempts to learn the clown's routines and cannot. The clowns, who perform their routines perfectly but mechanically, are not funny. Chaplin, who performs them ineptly but with tremendous life, is hilarious. Not, I hasten to add, that Hanneford performs his comedy stunts here ineptly. Indeed, the funniest parts of the movie are when he performs a pratfall, or when he leaps into his girlfriend's arms. However, Hanneford is not a movie actor, he is a circus clown and he does not know how to bring any sense of involvement at this scale. Neither is Leslie Goodwins, who would come, over the next decade or two, to rule the RKO shorts and comedy departments, able to make him.

So we are left with a comedy that has a few good moments, a story that is standard and decently but not well executed and.... well, it's not bad. I suppose that, for a Weiss Brothers comedy, that makes it as good as you can get. But you can get better elsewhere.