Word: slapsticker
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...natured spoofing of the standard Hollywood thriller. Robert Young (sent to cover the war in Africa because he is a typical "smalltown reporter"), Reginald Owen (a Nazi Intelligence officer posing as a British Intelligence officer), Edward Ciannelli (an Oriental mastermind) and Jeanette MacDonald engage in a game of deliberately slapstick I Spy. Climax comes when the sympathetic vibrations of Singer MacDonald's high C tickle open a secret door into a pyramid, foil a Nazi plot to bomb a U.S. transport by remote control...
...accommodate Jack Benny's slapstick comedy talents, matters are so arranged that he 1) is conked by sheaves of loose planks; 2) falls downstairs once; 3) falls through the floor twice; 4) falls down two different wells; 5) suffers a grand climax in which a horde of 17-year locusts devour him down to his underwear...
...funnier than either of its two predecessors. It would have been the best comedy of the year but the directors and script writers worked too hard. They combined the dialogue and action so neatly the number of good goes are lost while the audience is howling at the slapstick...
There's plenty of slapstick mostly a clever rehash of the best parts in "The Road to Singapore" and The Road to Zanzibar," Bob Hope and Bing Crosby get chased around until they run into Dorothy Lamour. Then they enter the chase, neither overlooking the slightest opportunity to cut the other's throat. The only hand between them is the memory of their common "Aunt Lucy" whose ghostly form makes numerous and picturesque appearances throughout the picture. Bing eventually comes out the winner. He gets the girl. But Bob manages to corral a choice specimen from his temporary harem...
...lurking dangers. A gun, fired dead into the lens, is satisfactorily startling. In one terrific shot (made in combat) a Nazi plane, wrapped in a white fringe of fire, skitters on the sea like a pebble on a pond. In the closing sequence there is a cheerful, almost slapstick substitution of U.S. guile for U.S. courage which would have been inconceivable as propaganda in World War I. The crew of the Sybil Gray captures a U-boat supply ship and learns a Nazi trick of mining torpedoes with delayed-action detonators. Disguised as Nazis, the Sybil Gray crew replenishes three...