Dance with Me, Henry

It seemed to me that this was essentially a children's film. While A and C made films that children could watch and enjoy, I think this and "Jack and the Beanstalk" were the only two films they made which were explicitly for children.

The beginning ten minutes (good set-up of a potentially funny situation) and the last ten (imagine "Home-alone" with twenty kids) are fine, but the middle is quite flabby. There are no memorable routines and very few (about ten) funny lines.

Actually, I do not know if the producers had it in mind, but the movie works well as a pilot for a T.V. series. One can imagine all sorts of great sitcom possibilities with Lou as a bachelor trying to raise two kids while owning and operating a "Kiddie land" amusement park. When this was made, Danny Thomas's "Make Room for Daddy" had been a hit show running for three years and "Bachelor Father" was about to begin its run, so a "raising kids" comedies were the type of thing a network might buy. I suppose if it had done well as a movie, it could have been developed into a television series. So, I believe that it was rather a smart career choice for A and C.

Sherry Alberoni as Boopsi and Rusty Hamer are the two stand-out kid performers. Sherry is Shirley Temple cute trying to convince the cops that she witnessed a murder and Rusty Hamer is the nicest and sincerest boy actor of that period (Ron Howard did steal his crown a few years later).

A and C fans will savor a few well done moments,(the visit of the nasty welfare worker at the beginning, for example) but on the whole only their fans will be able to sit through it.

The last shot of the movie with Costello playing the pied-piper is delightful and cute. If the rest of the movie had been so, this movie would have revived A and C's careers and fortunes.

The final Abbott & Costello movie sees them trying something different, with notably less emphasis on violent slapstick and more on emotional resonance. Costello is particularly subdued; his character isn't the bumbling incompetent he was in all their other pictures, and neither is he Abbott's scapegoat. It's not an entirely successful move, but it has its moments, and Costello is surprisingly effective.

In 1955 after Abbott&Costello Meet The Mummy, Bud and Lou finished their long stint with Universal Pictures. They did one more film, an independent released by United Artists titled Dance With Me Henry.

The title comes from a hit song of the time that her nibs, Miss Georgia Gibbs had a hit record of. It's heard instrumentally at some points in the film. The film has a role reversal of sorts, Bud is a shiftless gambler who owes some big money to gangster Ted DeCorsia because of some bad bets and Lou is the owner of a small amusement park, beloved by the kids especially the orphans from a home run by Father Frank Wilcox. Lou being the good hearted soul that he is takes Bud in.

But the gangsters want their money from Bud and if not they want him to go to work for them on some jobs like a bank heist they pulled just recently. Lou arranges to meet the District Attorney Robert Shayne and tell him what he knows. But then at the amusement park the DA is killed by DeCorsia's chief henchman Richard Reeves and Reeves also hides the loot from the job because he's planning a double cross.

It's quite a jackpot the boys have themselves in, but there's a providence that watches out over innocents in films. And in Dance With Me Henry, Lou is almost Stan Laurel like in his innocence.

That's what's missing in Dance With Me Henry. The old burlesque routines that one expects from an Abbott&Costello film just aren't here for their fans to savor. Abbott who's usually a sharpie and always putting stuff over on Costello is the idiot here and it doesn't wear well on him. He's also put on a lot of pounds and he's almost as rotund as Costello. Lou's character is something new, as if he was trying to explore new vistas.

The film didn't go over so good and the boys split up the following year. And Lou would do one solo feature film before his demise two years later. Dance With Me Henry is not a horrible film, but it just isn't what I and other fans came to expect from Bud and Lou. They deserved something better as a farewell.

Abbott & Costello's swansong was a reasonable farewell, playing like a fifties sitcom with a rather subdued Lou who in a plot reminiscent of Norman Wisdom gets involved with cute kids and mean adults.

the marx brothers and laurel and hardy and their fans suffered thru mediocre final films and Abboott & Costello were no different.

DANCE WITH ME, HENRY (title and tune based upon an early Etta James cover of a hank Ballard tune) has none of those records' energy but it is certainly more energetic - and better - than the critics have said it was.

number one: the story, although overly sentimental, is fun (Lou is a kind of local "pied piper" and protector of "lost" kids, always ducking and dodging the local social workers) but our heros get a chance to do a little more *acting* (Bud is effective as a real down and outer, not the usual conniver).

directed by SUPERMAN (TV) Director Charles Barton. and if U R a fan of the Danny Thomas Show, you'll see Rusty Hamer, a year or so before it premiered!