A Night at the Movies

This short comedy was recently selected for inclusion as a special feature in the new DVD release of the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races. Based on the evidence at hand, viewers unfamiliar with Robert Benchley may find it hard to believe that the guy was a first class wit on par with Groucho himself, in his own understated way, but you'll just have to take my word for it. Better still, take a look at some of the comic articles he wrote for magazines and newspapers, most of which have been collected in book form. Benchley's nonsense pieces and essays on the frustrations of day-to-day life are still funny, and often hilarious.

Benchley's short films are generally pleasant, but only occasionally rise to the level of his written output. Many of them focus on the foibles of bourgeois domestic life, and come off rather like the later TV sitcoms of the '50s. However, the filmed versions of Benchley's double-talk lectures sometimes scale the heights of inspired insanity he regularly reached in his magazine pieces, and one very early talkie from 1928, The Sex Life of the Polyp, is one of my favorite Benchley shorts, a perfect little gem of comic absurdity.

As for the item at hand, A Night at the Movies is a pleasant but unremarkable effort devoted to the petty irritations encountered by Mr. and Mrs. Average during an evening at the local Bijou. There is confusion with the tickets, difficulty finding seats, a tall fat man who sits directly in front and blocks the screen, someone with a persistent cough, and a moment of strangeness involving a small boy with an eerie stare. (Today, of course, a major problem would be pagers and cell-phones going off during the show.) For modern viewers this short may be more valuable as social history than as comedy, seeing as how it was made in an era when men in public places had to find a place to stow their hats, and dancers performed at movie theaters between the features. On that level this film is an interesting time capsule.

This modest comedy short may not look like much alongside the Marx Brothers, but don't dismiss Robert Benchley. You'll just need to look elsewhere for his funniest and freshest work.

Another fun Benchley short about he and his wife going to see a movie and the various foibles they go through before and during.

As an aside, I can't imagine having a kid staring at me like that. I can laugh at it in this context, but if it really happened to me, I'd change seats way faster than he did!

Husband (Robert Benchley) and wife go to the movies. They are not that excited. At the theater, they are given two tickets, one for the movie and one for a raffle to win a new car. It's a series of bad experiences.

Is this actually funny? I know Benchley was some kind of comedy star of his day. I don't really get it. It's complaining about the movie going experience as it gets played in the movie theaters. I guess that could work if done well. First, I don't like this couple. I don't care about their movie going experience. The kid is almost funny. I can see the attempt, but the result is no laughs.

Night at the Movies, A (1937)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar-nominated Robert Benchley short has a couple (Benchley, Betty Ross Clarke) going to the movie where all sorts of trouble starts. Benchley has to put up with losing his tickets, sitting behind a tale man and then getting lost while trying to find an exit. This comedy doesn't feature too many laughs but it's still highly entertaining just because it's fun seeing someone else go through various trouble that could happen at a movie theater. Benchley's style of comedy does aim for laugh-out-loud moments but instead just mild smiles seeing stuff that I'm sure we've all gone through and it's rather funny how this film, now seventy-two-years old, is still relevant today. I've seen quite a few of Benchley's shorts but I've read that none of them could compare to his comic writing but as of this date I've yet to read anything from him.

Robert Benchley and wife Betty Rose Clarke decide to go to the movies, and that's where their troubles begin in this typically amusing Benchley short.

His vehicles were moving from the ones in which he lectured vaguely on subjects which left the viewer knowing less than when he started, to ones in which he performed as the befuddled man ever in quest of a decent good time and doomed to failure. Although the sight of a movie house packed with thousands of attendees, and a disdainful staff to supervise their comings and going may confuse the modern viewer, still we can feel his consternation at trying to find a movie that neither he nor his wife have seen before. After all, although we may no longer go to the movies several times a week, we do have to deal with cable or TV service with thousands of channels and offerings.... and nothing on.