Word: costello
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Abbott and Costello and Dick Powell in the Navy (Universal) is about all the title a theater marquee can take. As a title, it has one virtue: it tells the whole plot of the picture without wasting a word. As a gag it bright-lights a major weakness of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello's second cinemadventure: the picture strains for its laughs...
...Navy their wacky, old-style fast talk gets snagged in the bony vocalizing of the Andrews Sisters, in the infantile attempts of Crooner Powell to get away from it all, in thousands of dollars worth of Universal props. Despite these expensive handicaps, sour-pussed Bud Abbott and outsized Lou Costello manage to resurrect many a guffaw for low-comedy devotees...
...Universal) is one of those cheap Hollywood offerings ($350,000) which startle even their closest friends with huge returns (present guesstimate: $1,000,000). It also gives audiences a satisfactory opportunity to appraise the talents of Broadway Comics Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, a new pair of old-school comedians full of blackface repartee and Mack Sennett slapstick...
...accidental volunteers, Abbott and Costello trundle off to a streamlined Army camp which, if believed, may start a flood of enlistments. Among a bevy of well-tailored hostesses are the Andrews Sisters, who swing their tunes at regular intervals, a standard ingenue (Jane Frazee), who helps militarize a misfit from the Social Register (Lee Bowman). But the principal shenanigans belong to Abbott and Costello, who are rumored to have evoked an imperial laugh from Charlie Chaplin at a private Hollywood screening. With lean Mr. Abbott feeding lines to porky Mr. Costello, they sometimes sound like a breath of Joe Miller...
...Kasznar) is the hastily doctored version of a feeble revue that expired a fortnight ago after seven performances. The doctoring has helped but hasn't cured. Good bits: the veteran Willie Howard, whose Jewish accent cannot be cut with a knife, as a ballet dancer; hot little Diosa Costello shaking everything shakeable in a scorching conga...