Word: slapsticker
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Doubtless all this might be funny (after all, there was Arsenic and Old Lace). But it isn't. And it is all the less funny because it tries so hard to be. It is crudely and noisily staged, gives up satire for slapstick, proves even more alcoholic than macabre. It owes its few real laughs to what Thomas Mitchell, as the undertaker, does with his facial muscles and his vocal cords...
This indigestible lump of melodrama is leavened now & again by a stretch of slapstick which is equally unreal. The only real moments, in fact, are provided by Gloria Grahame, who proves once again, as she did by her performance as the sullen taxi dancer in Crossfire, that she can be one of Hollywood's most convincing chippies...
Wars come and go, but the regulated idiocy of Army life remains one of the most popular sources of slapstick. The current offering at the Wilbur, a farce written by James B. Allardice and staged by Ezra "Henry Aldrich" Stone deals with the complicated plots and pratfalls of the men in the orderly room of an armored training company during...
...Live A Little" worthy of a laugh has been filched from another picture or another era. In a night-club scene, Cummings shamelessly repeats the Groucho Marx classic: "If we dance any closer, I'll be in back of you." He makes liberal use of several Buster Keaton slapstick techniques, such as the hurling of moist, gooey materials, and has exhumed the standard character of the jittery businessman...
That Wonderful Urge (20th Century-Fox) is a stale, wearisome slapstick sermon on the text "You, Too, Can Be Happy, Though Rich." The example is a tabloid reporter (Tyrone Power) who writes scurrilous stories about a chain-store heiress (Gene Tierney). Disguised as a playboy-author, he pursues her to Sun Valley, and she develops an odd urge to share more of her time-and maybe her millions-with him. To most reporters, this might seem like very sweet vengeance, if you can get it; to Reporter Power, the whole idea is repugnant...