High Flyers

Jerry Lane (Bert Wheeler) and Pierre Potkin (Robert Woolsey) are carnival barkers offering a ride, but they have never piloted a plane. Smuggler Dave Hanlon tricked them into flying a real plane. It goes badly and they crash onto the Arlington estate. They have a series of misunderstandings. They fall for the daughter Arlene (Marjorie Lord) and the maid Juanita (Lupe Velez).

I don't find the guys funny. They don't get one single laugh even when one of them try to play the Chaplin tramp. One does a black-face dance and Arlene claims that it's the funniest thing ever. The only slightly funny one is Juanita with her exaggerated Latina character. There is some song and dance mixed in. It's not the best, but at least, that's somewhat fine.

Robert Woosley and Bert Wheeler are a comedy duo whose career was hurt by the strict enforcement of the Production Code in 1934: their often risquè humor was necessarily reduced to mostly "safe" slapstick. In "High Flyers", their last film together, the comedy is weak and repetitive, and the story is aimless. But there are a few funny bits, and some bright spots, particularly a couple of specialty numbers which have absolutely nothing to do with the "plot": Lupe Velez's terrific impersonation of Dolores Del Rio (what adds an extra punch to this is that Del Rio was probably the only other Mexican female star working in Hollywood at that time), and Wheeler's equally terrific impersonation of Charlie Chaplin. There is also a pretty spectacular plane crash. ** out of 4.

I first heard of the comedy team of Wheeler & Woolsey when Chris Costello mentioned them as one of several of those movie teams that had come before her father Lou and Bud Abbott invaded the cinema themselves in her book about her dad. In another book called "Abbott and Costello in Hollywood", their routines were compared to Bud & Lou's. When I was in Jacksonville, FL, during the '90s, I saw a few of their films on AMC which I managed to enjoy. So I'm now reviewing what turned out to be Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey's final movie as a team as the latter would pass on not long after its completion. I found them as funny as ever and I also liked the supporting turns by Lupe Velez (especially during her two numbers of which one of them is with Woolsey) and usual Marx Brothers foil Margaret Dumont. The plot is all over the place so I won't go there but I was also charmed by Wheeler's Charlie Chaplin impersonation when tap dancing, not so with his blackface shtick! So on that note, High Flyers Is worth a look.

This is the last Wheeler and Woolsey film, as Robert Woolsey died of kidney disease soon after this film was completed. And in light of this, this is a very sad way to end the team's career. While I will agree that Wheeler and Woolsey were not a particularly funny team compared to the Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy, they were capable of making better films than this. Perhaps Woolsey's illness helped to make this film to dreadfully unfunny, but regardless of why, this is a film so bad that only the Ritz Brothers might have been able to make so unfunny a film in this era (they were like a "poor man's Wheeler and Woolsey").

The bottom line is that the film never really made me smile or laugh. So many of the snappy lines from Woolsey never seemed to have punchlines or points--it was just "blathering". A very tiresome and unfunny film with so little energy it just isn't worth seeing unless you are a die-hard fan.

I have long been a fan of this pair.More for the characters than the actual humour.After all the jokes are rarely funny now.I have only just seen this final film of theirs,and i have to say that this is a sad finale to a double act which i have much enjoyed.I think that RKO must have had their doubts because they have cast Lupe Velez,presumably to bolster the laughs.Unfortunately it does not work.She is on one level the boys on another.This film even manages to make the great Margaret Dumont seem unfunny.Also i have to say that poor Robert Woolsey seems to be quite strained,if you look at his face.Sadly,it isn't funny and is a poor epitaph.