robcat2075's reviews

How can the Hal Roach Laurel & Hardy films be so good but the Hal Roach Charley Chase films be so lame?

Stan Laurel is why.

Stan Laurel was the creative force in the Laurel & Hardy team; he devised most of the situations and gags they so expertly presented in their films for Hal Roach.

None of that expertise is apparent in the contrived situations of a Charley Chase film. It's one unfunny altercation after another.

I do have a question, however. What is that thing on the front of the street car that Charley gets caught in? What is it for?

I'm fascinated by Charlie Chan movies because the white people in them are either idiots... or the real killer. I don't think you could recruit a bigger ship of fools than the white people in a Charlie Chan movie.

They're always far more sure of themselves, far more self-entitled than they have any right to be. Or just flat out clueless.

Warner Oland's portrayal of Chan is a broad caricature of ever-smiling, pidgin-Englished Orientalism which would seem offensive but... maybe Charlie is just acting that way when the white people are around. When he's alone, he's all business.

The Chinaman stereotype is Chan's disguise.

When the white people walk in, he flips back to confirming their low expectations. He's one step ahead of them because he's made them think he's one step behind.

It will be impossible to rehabilitate these movies for general audiences but I find them fascinating for the subtext of people being undone by their own prejudice.

I came to this because Jerry Seinfeld spoke so admiringly of it in his CCC with Jerry Lewis. I can't accuse him of under-selling it.

I can see why the French thought Lewis was a super genius. They saw "The Bellboy" and thought, "well, it's not as bad as Italian neo-realism and that's supposed to be genius stuff..."

I imagine audiences of the time got a kick out of this. It's a bunch of silly sketches connected into one film without a significant story. It's a bit of a precursor to a film like Monty Python's "The Holy Grail" but without the strong writing, the strong comedy timing and the strong editing. After watching this film one understands a bit why Monty Python was such a shock a decade later... "The Bell Boy" is what passed for film comedy in the 60s.

I understand that he patched this thing together in record time. It's a feat in just that regard but would say that Lewis has over-estimated his ability to carry a scene by himself and underestimated the need for strong supporting players.

The opening scene with the "executive" is a cop out. Did the studio make him add that? I don't know, but it is typical of this movie's habit of pre-telegraphing the joke so it's not funny when it finally arrives.

It was free on Netflix so I watched it, needing a comedy.

Characters amusing for their foolishness and mutual unreliability. It recalls Houston's "Beat the Devil" with Bogart.

Everyone has a serious problem. You might say their problems get resolved, not solved.

I admire actors who can create work for themselves and that is what has happened here. Produced, written and directed by one of the leads.

Don't believe the reviewer who said this was gay propaganda. There's about 20 seconds of superficial gay angle, purely as a joke.

Much is written about the talent and time that go into making a cartoon like this as if to validate its status as a piece of movie history.

But really... who is lazier, the fictional Negroes in the cartoon or the real-life writers, animators and director who are so lacking in originality that they are recycling 30, 40, 50... 100 year old jokes and insults just to get seven minutes of running time?

Even in 1941 when this was released this was stale stuff, already beaten to death a hundred times over in films, theater and commercial art.

I'm sure the artists involved would claim they didn't have "a racist bone in their body". They seem to also be lacking the bones for basic observational skills. There are a thousand and one way to draw or caricature a black person and yet that one black-face stereotype is what they keep pulling out of their ass as if that were the only option.

The hipster girl that gets off the steamboat is one small deviation from that formula but she's practically white. It's like they couldn't reconcile dark skin with non-stereotypical behavior.

All in all, a rather sorry outing for the Lantz Studio who had quite a few sorry outings in their run.

"Last Salute to the Commodore" almost appears as if someone tried to extend "the stateroom scene" from the Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera" into a feature length film, with a murder mystery added on top of it all.

It's quite weak in may ways. The victim, the motive, the clues that lead Columbo to the solution.

The supporting assistants to Columbo, especially "Mac" seem to have no reason to be there. Usually his assistants hinder him in some humorous and innocent way, but the present ones are just... there. I'm going to guess there were some contractual obligations being fulfilled.

When I encountered this movie it was promoted as a "dark comedy". It is not that. It fails completely at that. You may tell me that Jodi Foster didn't intend it as a comedy. That may well be, but that is how it was pitched to get me to try it. It's unfunny and disappointing on that score.

As a portrait of people with emotional problems (most of the characters) it also fails. Mel Gibson's character gets substantial examination but the others are shorthand movie clichés. Overall, I never believe that Walter believes he needs this puppet device.

Plus to whoever wrote the score, that does help get across the message that the actor performances don't, but the movie still doesn't get to the goal line.

Like most comedies it might play better for a large assembled audience than in solitary home viewing but there isn't much going on here that is amusing.

Jack Benny lacks the convincing leading-man quality to carry this role. Certainly there's no "chemistry" between him and Sheridan.

Ya know... a funny contrarian casting for this would have been Edward G. Robinson. He could have done the exasperation of the homeowner bit very well. Jimmy Stewart would be a more conventional casting but I imagine he would have turned down a script like this.

Basically there aren't many funny lines in this. There are lots of lines that the music sound track sort of tries to plus and let us know were intended as humorous but it's all pretty weak.

The funniest part was the complication involving "Uncle Stan", that was worthy of a comedy of errors.

I never saw this episode until maybe... the 80s?... long after I thought I had seen every Dick Van Dyke Show episode there ever was. Imagine my surprise as the story unfolded.

It is the most gob-smackingly strange and compelling half hour of sitcom TV I've ever seen. It was so odd I couldn't even stay in my chair as I watched it. I could not reconcile what I was seeing with the world of Rob and Laura Petrie I thought I knew and yet there wasn't one false note about it, it is so perfectly executed.

Up until the very end I was wondering how they were ever going to pull this out of the fire.

Whoever wrote this deserves a place in TV Valhalla.

Almost every face in this movie was a notable star but only a handful are remembered today. A few, like Joe E. Brown, I knew only from caricatures in cartoons.

The musical performances are the best part, in fact, I fast-forwarded through most of the cringe-worthy story sections to concentrate on those. The story almost seems like a horrible joke on any real servicemen who might have seen this.

As others have noted, one of the highlights is the Golden Gate Quartet number. I've read that studios had to plan scenes with substantial black performers ( i.e. those not portraying servants) so that they could be cut from the movie without damaging the story. Southern white audiences demanded that. It is very much in evidence here. Unlike most of the other musical segments they have no tie-in with the action on the floor.

Too bad someone couldn't come up with a better story to tie it all together but the time-capsule nature of it makes up for some of that.

I saw "Dynamite Swine" at the 2010 JamFest Indie Film Festival in Hammond, Louisiana and was quite impressed with it.

It's a bit of a caper movie revolving around the premise of a guy who has gone one hand too far in his gambling and now has an impossibly short time to figure out how to retire an impossibly large debt owed to an impossibly onerous villain.

Best of all it's a funny film. There are parts where almost every cut is adding a new amusing element. It's possible the body of the film is perhaps too funny as there's no way to tie everything up at the end and top what has come before.

There are moments where the acting performances get a bit too stagey and tip into camp but the fast pace prevents any of those from being dwelled upon too long.

I'm sure this must have been done on a small budget but it's not painfully obvious and it's not detrimental to the flow of the film. I'd compare this to the early shoestring films of Robert Townsend or Robert Rodriguez except that it's more entertaining.

I saw this as "Duck Dodgers in the 3rd Dimension" at the World Animation Celebration in L.A. in 1997.

I was quite knocked out by it, both for the 3D effects and for the faithful revival of the classic WB characters in it.

For once someone got it right. The characters were in character, the voices sounded right and the animation did them justice.

We were told that everything was animated on paper first by 2D animators, then those images were handed to 3D animators to match exactly. Sounds awkward but it worked great.

This film hasn't been widely seen. Hopefully with the current 3D boom it will be released theatrically, perhaps on the front of a similarly themed live action film.

I think I was probably about 8 or 9 when this film came thru White Bear Lake Minnesota. It seemed to have been ceaselessly promoted on local television and my friends and I had been playing out the scenes we saw in the commercial for weeks beforehand in the wooded vacant lot next to my house.

Dinosaurs, mastodons, Pterodactyls... this movie had it all. When we finally saw it in the theater we loved it and it remained one of the top 2 or 3 pictures that really stand out from those years. But I only saw it that once. I often wondered about it over the years, but was never sure of the title. Maybe I just dreamed it?

Finally seeing "Journey" again on DVD 40 years later, I'm aware of many lapses and shortcomings in the film that I never noticed when I was 8. The grafting of the New York City bookends onto the original Czech film is a marvel of economy and Ed Wood style film-making, but what the hey... it worked for me when I was 8.

I have no idea what a child today would think of this film. I would hope they'd enjoy it. I would hope they would find excitement in identifying with the boys in the film. But I don't know... you can't count on today's kids to make allowances for the production standards of 1950's Czech film making.

My biggest complaint is that the (pirate?) DVD i watched has a whole scene with the dialog wildly out of sync. Not just careless dubbing out of sync, but WAYYY out of sync.

Another vaudeville act captured by the Vitaphone cameras. Their material will seem well-worn today, but I can imagine this was amusing in it's time. Wise-cracking women were probably a bit of a novelty and the borderline titillating nature of their comments may have helped draw the audience in.

I notice they talk easily about drinking alcohol. They have disdain for it but not on the scale that would remind us alcohol was a banned substance at the time.

There's very little visual element to their routine, it's really more like a radio sketch with a few props added to set the scene. But it's a great little time capsule of the origins of sketch comedy.

I saw this as a DVD extra to the 2007 DVD release of "The Jazz Singer" (Disc 3)

This is one of the better Vitaphone shorts, in no small part due to the comfortable on-camera demeanor of the performers, especially Ray Mayer. The songs are corny, but they seem to know that and acknowledge that to us in future with a wink and a nudge.

Edith Evan's singing is just fine, but Mayer's accompanying piano work and spoken introductions are a subtle parody act in itself. (Watch the gum.) This is a vaudeville act captured on film and I presume a successful one, but I wonder how they ever played this to the back row of a live theater setting. Somehow they must have done it.

I'm never sure what to expect when I launch one of these old Vitaphone shorts. Some are painfully modest acts, and then there are gems like this where an exuberant performer is able to really sell it.

The campy nature of Mr. De Pace's manner is the best part of it although he obviously plays his mandolin well. It brings to mind a combination of Harpo Marx, Chico Marx and the 1960's pop-star Tiny Tim. I wonder who influenced who?

This short is one of the restored Vitaphone films included on the 2007 DVD release of "the Jazz Singer" as bonus material. The sound quality is surprisingly good in view of the age of the material.