That Inferior Feeling

That Inferior Feeling (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Whether you're a fan or not of Robert Benchley you should find yourself having a great time with this one. In the film Benchley plays his alter ego Mr. Doakes. This time out he suffers from an inferior complex, which results in him not being able to cope with certain situations. One example is when he goes to check into a hotel with his wife, he fears that the worker might feel he's being dirty with a non-wife so he asks for separate rooms. Another example comes when he needs directions but is afraid to ask fearing that the worker might think he's dumb. From the three dozen or so Benchley shorts I've seen, there's no question that this one here is the best and it certainly contains some of the biggest laughs. There's one very funny moment after another with one of the biggest laughs coming from when he's being fitted for a new suit and tries as to why he wears such a large size. Another funny sequence is one where Benchley is forced to buy a white suit and is too embarrassed to walk down the streets so he pays a guy to drive him to work. Benchley's humor has always been dry and it's always been hit and miss with me but this short here is one that should appeal to just about anyone. The jokes are very fast and most important they work extremely well.

You may be curious just what my credentials are to be writing a review here. While I ponder that, I will offer my comments on this feature. I saw it, along with a few other Benchley shorts, at the Film Forum in NYC a few years back. Of the roughly ten or twelve I saw, this was my favorite, and so I rate it a "ten" here. That is not to suggest that you should give up your plan to watch "The Godfather" in favor of it, but merely that, if you had to kill nine minutes waiting for the main feature to start, watching this would be at least as pleasant a way to pass the time as watching a typical preview or Coke ad. It comprises Benchley giving a lecture on the baseless but persistent feeling of inferiority that afflicts many of us. We see a typical citizen in a number of quotidian situations that he ought to be able to deal with while stifling a yawn and looking at a crossword puzzle, but that somehow make him almost too anxious to cope. Benchley illustrates the problem with these examples and offers some solid general advice on how to fight it, and though it was perhaps meant to be merely humorous, I for one found it quite helpful.

Perhaps the one-to-ten scale is too much latitude to grant an amateur like me with which to pass judgment on the labors of serious and talented professionals, and it would be safer to let me work with, say, three-to-eight. I won't argue with that, but this is the system that exists, and if you feel strongly enough about it, perhaps you could petition IMDb to institute a change and rein in people like me. In fact, I think will start the ball rolling myself.