Word: slapstick
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Montgomery has more of a chance to spread himself than his leading lady. He gets drunk twice--once on hard cider. He staggers past a group of "proper" Hoosier matrons and topples into a snow-bank, in an episode that is frankly slapstick. But Montgomery isn't a hammy drunk, nor is he an actor pretending to be drunk; he manages to get drunk in a delightfully individual and convincing way. And in his sober moments, he's always in complete command of his part, that of a flippant and roguish magazine writer...
From the moment Barry Fitzgerald enlists an unemployed Hollywood stunt man to impersonate the crazy and deceased scion of the Wealthy Tatlock family, "Miss Tatlock's Millions" rockets its imaginative and hugely funny way through acres of slapstick to a wet and happy ending in the Hawaiian breakers...
...revival produces few of the well-remembered howls and wonderful aching bellylaughs. Never anything more than sheer slapstick with all the attendent pratfalls, squashed toppers, and skinned knees, "Bringing Up Baby" lacks the necessary speed of action and the vital, high caliber gags to carry it over the inevitable slow spots. It bogs and badly after starting off at a tremendous clip. The middle reels, where any normally intelligent gagman would be clearing the decks for a final smashing boffola, are gummed up by a miserably dull jail routine that talks the audience straight into dreamland. And they sleep right...
...Hughes, the lone wolf, want with RKO? He takes great pains to hide his motives; but no doubt one motive was his hankering for theater outlets controlled by himself. RKO owns 124 theaters. Hughes has had great trouble distributing The Outlaw-that long and vigorously publicized mixture of sex, slapstick and violence-mainly because of censorship, but partly because independent exhibitors were simply afraid of it. To date, it has played only about 40% of its original contracts. In the face of derisive snorts from highbrow critics, Hughes firmly believes that, if distribution obstacles can be overcome, The Outlaw will...
...other hand, the straight technical expertism is still one of the wonders of the movie world. The plain raw slapstick and character comedy are the best to be found-except in better Disneys-since the comic masters of silence. And in every opportunity for the eerie, the cruel, the ghostly, the terrifying, the darkly and mysteriously sad, genuine creative inspiration jumps to life...