Cousins Edna May Oliver and Edward Everett Horton return from Europe to their ancestral mansion, where all the furniture is attached. They are broke. Overawing the locals, they set up house amidst the cobwebs and plan to welcome E.E. Clive, Una O'Connor and their daughter, Thelma Todd, hoping that by having Horton marry a rich aristocrat, they can repair their fortunes.
I found the beginning of the movie a trifle slow, as Miss Oliver and Mr. Horton were continually baffled by the simplest situation, and Miss Hyams fainting on a couch. Perhaps it was a mistake to cast the two against each other. Miss Oliver's deliberate pacing, like an ocean liner crashing into a pier, and Mr. Horton's befuddlement are funnier in opposition to quicker people. However, the pace of the comedy picked up gradually for an increasing arc of insanity that crested in a game of Saloojie with a roast goose, and then with Eddie Brophy, in an honestly funny performance, as a pugnacious "Flanagan of Central" bowling over everyone.
There's a superfluity of comic casting, as Miss Hyams as a cookware salesman and E.E. Clive, as a sputtering aristocrat talking about the Punjab compete with an overawed Any Devine, a thunderstruck Grant Mitchell, leaving Thelma Todd to play the straight man!
I found the beginning of the movie a trifle slow, as Miss Oliver and Mr. Horton were continually baffled by the simplest situation, and Miss Hyams fainting on a couch. Perhaps it was a mistake to cast the two against each other. Miss Oliver's deliberate pacing, like an ocean liner crashing into a pier, and Mr. Horton's befuddlement are funnier in opposition to quicker people. However, the pace of the comedy picked up gradually for an increasing arc of insanity that crested in a game of Saloojie with a roast goose, and then with Eddie Brophy, in an honestly funny performance, as a pugnacious "Flanagan of Central" bowling over everyone.
There's a superfluity of comic casting, as Miss Hyams as a cookware salesman and E.E. Clive, as a sputtering aristocrat talking about the Punjab compete with an overawed Any Devine, a thunderstruck Grant Mitchell, leaving Thelma Todd to play the straight man!