Sons o' Guns

Joe E. Brown's limited arsenal of comic effects may not be to everyone's taste, but in most of his B-comedies of the 1930s he employed them expeditiously. Even when playing a braggart or an egotist, there was - eventually - something lovable about the character getting his comeuppance when he learns that the girl means more to him than his ego.

But this picture, in addition to minimizing the mugging and the knockabout comedy that was Brown's stock in trade, pushes the downbeat characterization too far: a draft-dodger, a slacker who gropes to rationalize his obvious cowardice, in addition to being a stage star admired by the ladies but returning little of their affection. In brief, he is not likable, and he is not funny.

A few minutes of the film are enjoyable, but interestingly both scenes are insertions which could have been lifted without affecting the story line, and which, I suspect, may have been spliced in to give the picture some life: Brown's Apache pantomime, and the brief but charming dance with Joan Blondell in the barroom.

Brown's pictures were usually better, and seldom worse.