So You Want to Be a Gladiator

So You Want to Be a Gladiator (1955)

** (out of 4)

Lesser entry in the Joe McDoakes (George O'Hanlon) series finds our lovable loser back in the gladiator days and working as a servant for Nero. When he messes up a musical arrangement the great Nero forces him to fight a lion. Joe thinks that his buddy is actually in a lion suit but it turns out he must fight the real thing. This certainly isn't a highlight of the series but it does go to show that even a weak entry is still not that bad and is at least worth viewing once if you're a fan. I thought the first four or five minutes were the weakest parts as we get some rather lame jokes about the "house hold" back in the days as Joe and Alice do their usual fighting. The scene where Joe messes up isn't all that funny either but thankfully things pick up in the second half. The sequence where Joe fights the lion is poorly edited and there's one sequence where we see an obvious stunt man but I still managed to laugh a couple times. O'Hanlon's comic timing is top-notch and he really sells the scene with some nice delivery of the dialogue. The ending with the "slave girl" also gets a nice laugh.