I Dood It

I have this notion that the thirties was a great pressure cooker for movies, during which time all sorts of experiments were tried. Out of that period came the genres we know today, plus the great invention of Noir, uniquely American.

So I've been watching lots of 30s movies, not because they are good or particularly enjoyable. But because you can see the genotype of today's movies, which is to say I can see the origins of how we all dream and mostly imagine.

Now here is an anomaly, a 30s movie made in the 40s. I can only imagine that it was to feed the war-starved theaters. It is a remake and "borrows" musical numbers from a couple films that really were made in the 30s.

It is a spliced picture, three movies combined, something that was common in the 30's.

One movie is a stage show. Simple and straightforward. Lots of variety here.

A second movie is a comedic fold: a movie where all the players are involved in some way in a play (different than the earlier mentioned performances and more like "Gone with the Wind"). Lots of physical humor here. Red Skelton's technique was to perform a comedic motion (like rolling his eyes after getting bonked) in an exaggerated fashion and then abruptly stop before it finished and look at the audience with a big grin. It was humor about humor, a not very sophisticated but an effective fold that would grow into what we have today (and call irony).

The third movie has a wartime saboteur. Because the "fold," the notion of the play within the play, is explicit here, the explosion is to blow up the theater (and somehow simultaneously threaten the nation by mechanisms unexplained).

Its a mess, these three parts not integrated in any way.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

This is a film in which the parts are definitely greater than the sum. I understand it was a remake of a Buster Keaton silent feature,so the slapstick is pretty funny. Also entertaining are Miss Powell's dance numbers (even if two of them were lifted from previous films) and the musical numbers by Hazel Scott and Lena Horne. Red Skelton is his usual bumbling, confused,but lovable self. But the film as a whole is just goofy. Besides the whole "mistaken identity" plot,there is a subplot about Nazi saboteurs,which is just stupid and some really bad spoof of "Gone With the Wind" as the play that Powell's character is starring in. I guess that during wartime, anything light hearted was quickly put together and rushed into theaters as a diversion. This film looks it.

Here is a perfect little film. It's full of laughs, music and Red Skelton. I've never been a Red Skelton fan but when I saw this film on TCM I was hooked. I couldn't stop watching. Between the music, the dancing, and slapstick I can't say which one was better. The other thing is the direction. It didn't seem like it was made almost 60 years ago. The camera moment is on par with correct Hollywood. To that end, it was better than current directors do. No MTV editing but good clean shots that flow from one shot to the next without as many edits. Now that's something I would love current Hollywood try. This is a gem of a movie.

Red Skelton plays Joe Reynolds--a guy who is absolutely obsessed with the stage actress Connie Shaw (Eleanor Powell). He's so obsessed that he sees every performance of her latest play and knows it by heart. When he meets her finally, he doesn't realize that when she proposes marriage it isn't because she cares about him but because she is doing it to spite another man.

"I Dood It" is one of the weakest films that Red Skelton made for MGM and there are two huge strikes against it--and one smaller one. First, it's a remake and the original (starring Buster Keaton) is a better film--though for Keaton standards it's also a weak effort. Second, like too many of MGM's films, the studio insisted on inserting a lot of music into the film, as they really didn't seem to trust comedy. Because of this, Skelton, who could be very funny, seems like an afterthought at times. As for the smaller strike against the film, because it was made during WWII, they inserted a completely unnecessary subplot near the end about some evil-doer trying to blow things up to somehow aid the Axis. It really made no sense and was obviously tossed in at the last minute.

Note: To show how poor this movie is, the final musical number is recycled--taken from a Powell film ("Born to Dance") made seven years earlier.

I generally find Red Skelton films entertaining, so I poured a glass of wine and tee'd up "I Dood It" on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

Red Skelton was his usual great. I understand that Buster Keaton was his coach for some of the slapstick, and it showed. But one genius plus one genius equals some great comedy, so that was okay with me.

However, I was really blown away by three performers I didn't know very well. Eleanor Powell was a fine actress and a fantastic dancer. Check out her lasso dance near the beginning of the film. Absolutely amazing! And then later in the film comes Hazel Scott, a phenomenal jazz pianist who I'd never heard before. Then shortly thereafter we have Lena Horne in her powerful "Jericho" number. Those scenes alone make the movie worth spending a little time on.

There were a lot of musical numbers, too many in fact, and I have to admit I fast forwarded through the more tedious of them. And the plot was -- as many people have mentioned -- disjointed and illogical. But there's enough gold in this film to make it an enjoyable, although certainly not classic, movie event.