Word: slapstickers
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...spent a happy night before her marriage. A gay, trivial, skillfully situated matrimonial comedy derived from last season's play The Vinegar Tree, Should Ladies Behave is most amusing when it shows two of the best dramatic actors in the U. S. cinema spreading their talents thickly upon slapstick scenes. Samples: Lionel Barrymore eating a cold duck with indigestive grunts; Alice Brady fluttering in unjustified anticipation when Max Lawrence tells her he is planning to elope...
Meet the Baron (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is violent slapstick with a holocaust of puns. Comedian Jack Pearl takes the Baron Munchausen role he has played for the past 15 months on the radio. To the comedy of the howling lie, the stooge's skepticism and Pearl's definitive reply, "Vass you dere, Sharlie?" have been added Comedian Jimmy Durante and his masochistic schnozzle; Comedian Ted Healy; and three stooges who by the simple device of tirelessly clouting one another are nearly as funny as the Marx Brothers...
...characters are insignificant puppets; the situations are replete with refined slapstick and flippant chatter just one level above that of a mediocre burlesque show, and Noel Coward's personality remains aloof in the background. He is there; for he is, without any doubt, a superior showman who knows the mood of the public. As a movie, "Private Lives" is one of the few that will keep your interest to the end. The photography is particularly skillful in the Alps scenes, and is never slipshod. Robert Montgomery and Norma Shearer are convincing lunatics, boisterously funny...
Having presented the principal figures as slapstick personages, the picture finally tries to deal with them more solemnly. One stormy night when Annie is towing a load of garbage out to sea, she comes on the Glacier Queen, her shaft broken, foundering near a reef. This time Terry behaves like a hero. He crawls into the fire box of the Narcissus to repair the boiler so that the tug can pull the Glacier Queen out of danger. The film ends with Terry recovering from his burns and wear ing a medal. The steamship company has bought back the Narcissus...
...satire, it sets ringing no tocsin of reform but the welkin echoes its topical tintinnabulations. Aside from and under its uproarious humor, Hizzoner the Mayor has grimmer implications that need underlining nowadays for few U. S. citizens. In the perennial Augean task of turning the rascals out, such hearty slapstick broom-thwacks as Author Sayre's may be as effective in the long run as all the Herculean street-cleaning apparatus of a Judge Seabury...