Word: straight-man
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...only from Laurel and Hardy, the first two-man comedy act, but from all of their successors: Hope and Cresby, Abbott and Costello, Carney and Gleason, and Nichols's own broad way pair, the Odd Couple. All of these teams run on the same fuel--the big, ponderous straight-man who masterminds the operation always blowing up at the little dumb one, who muffs everything but stumbles on brilliant ideas through his wit. One's neat, one's messy. One's methodical, one's haphazard. It's all there in Oscar and Nicky, who could have synthesized everything that...
...surface jests. They're there to be enjoyed ("Hey, you decided what ya gonna do when you get out of college?" "I'm gonna be a homosexual."), but Weller's more concerned with exposing the evasions of commitment on which the put-on breeds. His characters can play straight-man for each other, but they cannot communicate any deep or pressing need. The superficial wit offers only the flimsiest of bridges over deeply troubled waters. One Boston critic complained that Moonchildren does injustice to the seriousness of the peace movement and other student causes by making too many jokes...
...Stratfords is great-too many gimmicky productions betray the fear that the greatest entertainer in the history of the theater is not entertaining enough-they do have the overriding merit of bringing Shakespeare alive for huge audiences. The actors and directors are not smug; seesawing between Shakespeare straight and Shakespeare as straight-man, they remain as restlessly dissatisfied as their customers are satisfied. Above all. the Stratfords have recaptured some of the fluidity of the Elizabethan theater, in which the "two hours' traffick of our stage" was literally true, since scene followed scene without break, and the scenery might...
...film's plot, however feeble, is enough to cramp the free-style wackiness of Martin & Lewis. In turn, their witless routines put a blight on whatever slim fun the play once offered in situations and dialogue. Between straight-man chores, Crooner Martin imitates Bing Crosby in the picture's songs, including one that gets billing as a Crosby imitation. Though he mugs, screeches, gyrates, even swishes through a female impersonation, Comedian Lewis sorely lacks one prop that has bolstered his success: a well-oiled nightclub audience...
Loder's interpretation is faultless. His comic timing is just about perfect, and his lines come out with the right mixture of straight-man and exaggeration to put them over, though occasionally he speaks too fast...