Too Many Highballs

Since there is precious little Lloyd Hamilton available to see, 'Too Many Highballs' remains must viewing for classic comedy buffs, even though it seems to largely waste this original and idiosyncratic comic talent. It has its moments but pretty much exemplifies what happens when you plug a comedian into a film that was tailor-made, start-to-finish, for an entirely different comic and characterization.

'Too Many Highballs' was originally slated to be the fifth W.C. Fields short for Mack Sennett, but, after the producer and Fields clashed after the production of 'The Fatal Glass Of Beer', the project was given to Hamilton. The script comes across as a vehicle for the wonderfully misanthropic anti-protagonist of The Barber Shop and The Dentist. Fields and co-writer Clyde Bruckman remade the storyline - of a beleaguered family man who tells a whopper so he can ditch work and go to the fights - two years later in the Paramount feature The Man On The Flying Trapeze.

Hamilton was obviously a very funny and skilled comedian, but, like Fields, needed to have scripts tailored specifically to his character; perhaps the Sennett Studio had to grind out those two-reelers too fast to rewrite this one to fit Hamilton's courtly, world-weary, Zero Mostel-like persona. So 'Too Many Highballs' is a bit of an uneasy coda to Lloyd Hamilton's near 20 year career.

Too Many Highballs (1933)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Mack Sennett produced this two-reeler, which was written by W.C. Fields and was supposed to star him but obviously that ended up not happening. Instead Lloyd Hamilton plays Harold Hobbs, a man who wants to live in peace with his wife but can't because his brother-in-law (Tom Dugan) and mother-in-law (Aggie Herring) have moved in and don't plan on moving out. One day on his way out Harold slips his brother-in-law some Castor oil and soon the police get involved. TOO MANY HIGHBALLS is a pretty weak film and I'm not sure even someone like Fields would have been able to save it. I think a lot of blame has to go towards Hamilton for not making a very interesting character but the screenplay is also quite poor as there's just not enough to keep it moving. There are a few funny moments scattered throughout the picture including one long sequence where Hamilton is trying to drive away but ends up hitting a couple cops and taken for a ride to jail. Everything with the brother-in-law is rather weak and especially the end bit where everyone thinks that Hamilton has poisoned him. These laughs just never work and come across quite forced at times. With a running time of 20-minutes this thing feels twice as long simply because of the lower quality in regards to both the cinematography and pacing. Director Clyde Bruckman certainly knew how to handle this genre but this isn't one of his better films.