How to Behave

How to Behave (1936)

** (out of 4)

Decent entry in Robert Benchley's "How to..." series. This time out a couple workers begin to argue about certain ways to behave so they call up Benchley who educates them on the proper way to do various things including if one should stand when a woman walks up to their table and if you should let a guest in your house sleep as long as they like. The more Benchley shorts I see the more I realize how hit and miss he is with me. I've seen quite a few shorts from Benchley over the years and I find some of them good while others are downright bad without anything good in them. This one here falls somewhere in the middle as we get a couple decent laughs but at the same time I couldn't help but wonder if this movie was put together through deleted scenes from other shorts. The reason I say that is that the film starts off telling us how we should behave yet it then turns to one long sequence with Benchley sleeping at a friends house, waking up and deciding not to wake others when he doesn't realize that he's the one who has slept late. That portion of the short runs so long you have to wonder if it was originally meant to be the entire story here. Either way, there just aren't enough laughs to call this a good movie but fans of the star will want to check it out.