By Hook or by Crook

Here is a perfect little film. It's full of laughs, music and Red Skelton. I've never been a Red Skelton fan but when I saw this film on TCM I was hooked. I couldn't stop watching. Between the music, the dancing, and slapstick I can't say which one was better. The other thing is the direction. It didn't seem like it was made almost 60 years ago. The camera moment is on par with correct Hollywood. To that end, it was better than current directors do. No MTV editing but good clean shots that flow from one shot to the next without as many edits. Now that's something I would love current Hollywood try. This is a gem of a movie.

Red Skelton plays Joe Reynolds--a guy who is absolutely obsessed with the stage actress Connie Shaw (Eleanor Powell). He's so obsessed that he sees every performance of her latest play and knows it by heart. When he meets her finally, he doesn't realize that when she proposes marriage it isn't because she cares about him but because she is doing it to spite another man.

"I Dood It" is one of the weakest films that Red Skelton made for MGM and there are two huge strikes against it--and one smaller one. First, it's a remake and the original (starring Buster Keaton) is a better film--though for Keaton standards it's also a weak effort. Second, like too many of MGM's films, the studio insisted on inserting a lot of music into the film, as they really didn't seem to trust comedy. Because of this, Skelton, who could be very funny, seems like an afterthought at times. As for the smaller strike against the film, because it was made during WWII, they inserted a completely unnecessary subplot near the end about some evil-doer trying to blow things up to somehow aid the Axis. It really made no sense and was obviously tossed in at the last minute.

Note: To show how poor this movie is, the final musical number is recycled--taken from a Powell film ("Born to Dance") made seven years earlier.

This is a film in which the parts are definitely greater than the sum. I understand it was a remake of a Buster Keaton silent feature,so the slapstick is pretty funny. Also entertaining are Miss Powell's dance numbers (even if two of them were lifted from previous films) and the musical numbers by Hazel Scott and Lena Horne. Red Skelton is his usual bumbling, confused,but lovable self. But the film as a whole is just goofy. Besides the whole "mistaken identity" plot,there is a subplot about Nazi saboteurs,which is just stupid and some really bad spoof of "Gone With the Wind" as the play that Powell's character is starring in. I guess that during wartime, anything light hearted was quickly put together and rushed into theaters as a diversion. This film looks it.

I generally find Red Skelton films entertaining, so I poured a glass of wine and tee'd up "I Dood It" on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

Red Skelton was his usual great. I understand that Buster Keaton was his coach for some of the slapstick, and it showed. But one genius plus one genius equals some great comedy, so that was okay with me.

However, I was really blown away by three performers I didn't know very well. Eleanor Powell was a fine actress and a fantastic dancer. Check out her lasso dance near the beginning of the film. Absolutely amazing! And then later in the film comes Hazel Scott, a phenomenal jazz pianist who I'd never heard before. Then shortly thereafter we have Lena Horne in her powerful "Jericho" number. Those scenes alone make the movie worth spending a little time on.

There were a lot of musical numbers, too many in fact, and I have to admit I fast forwarded through the more tedious of them. And the plot was -- as many people have mentioned -- disjointed and illogical. But there's enough gold in this film to make it an enjoyable, although certainly not classic, movie event.

No one seems to point out that his film is a remake of an earlier film Buster Keaton made for MGM titled "Spite Marriage", with many of the visual gags pulled directly from that earlier film with almost no changes. So as well as Red Skelton did in this, an earlier genius had done it first. Many of the best sight gags were lifted note-for-note from Keaton. The two films differ greatly in their sub-plots, but the core premise is the same. If you liked this movie, you should seek out the earlier film; a lot of it is genuinely funny. Although not Keaton at his peak (he was hampered by the MGM-imposed studio system), any Keaton is worth seeing.