Poppin' the Cork

I'll disagree with planktonrules. While I wouldn't call this a "good" college comedy, for me it made very interesting and amusing viewing. I'd ask "What better college comedies had been made by 1933?". What I particularly enjoyed was the portrayal of the prohibition repeal debate and the atmosphere that accompanied it. I'm not a particular fan of Berle, but it was also interesting to see him in the early period and to see that the double-take which became his trademark was part of his repertoire even back then. Another interesting aspect of this short film is the staging of the dance numbers. I had to check the opening credits to see if Busby Berkeley was mentioned. He wasn't, but whoever did the dance number staging certainly was under his influence. Another point: This is the last item in a collection of comedy shorts on a "Cavalcade of Comedy" DVD. My enjoyment of this one may have been conditioned by the previous exposure to comedy shorts made in 1929 and 1930, most of which are actually rather painful to sit through.

Making his talkie debut here, radio comedian Milton Berle manages to turn what should have been a rather pleasurable motion picture experience into a decided pain. True, his material was weak to begin with, but it doesn't get any better when Merle shouts out every puerile word at the top his voice. Nor does it improve the situation any, Mister Director, if you keep your camera on Ham's-the-name Milton for such an inordinate length of time. Well done, Jack, old boy! Thanks to your incompetence, you manage to send a promising script straight to the rubbish heap. And you almost do the same for Robert Alton's ritzy choreography which is most fortunately clever enough to survive both Berle's continued assaults and your own weak-as-water direction.

Buster Keaton did it. Harold Lloyd did it. The Marx Brothers did it. And, even Laurel and Hardy did it. So, I guess it's no surprise that Milton Berle would also do a comedy set on the college campus. It seems that during a twenty year stretch, there were an awful lot of comedies set at college. Other than Chaplin and Fields, nearly every comedian got in on the act.

In this case, Berle plays a fast-talking and obnoxious but very popular college student who is in a debate over the repeal of Prohibition. Milton is in favor of its repeal because he's just invented a new type of bottle stopper and wants to get rich if beer is legalized.

However, despite his energy, the film isn't especially funny and I found myself falling asleep again and again. I guess I'm just not a Berle fan, but this film seemed like a real dud!

Since originally writing this review, I noticed another review that liked the movie a lot more and said "What better college comedies had been made by 1933?". Well, how about HORSE FEATHERS (1928) and THE FRESHMAN (1925)? There are probably many more, but the Marx Brothers and Harold Lloyd classics quickly come to mind.