Muralhas de Jericó

Bumbling regular guy Joseph Rivington Renolds (Red Skelton) has a crush on Broadway star Connie Shaw (Eleanor Powell) from afar. She has her wandering-eye co-star boyfriend Larry West, and rival Suretta Brenton. Out of spite and due to a misunderstanding, she marries Joe.

The kissing rivalry is a great meet-cute. The gold mine misunderstanding is less cute. The musical within the movie slows everything down with some exceptions. It is amazing to see Lena Horne perform. The comedy is a bit uneven with Red Skelton working hard to keep it going. It has some fun moments but not all the moments work.

No one seems to point out that his film is a remake of an earlier film Buster Keaton made for MGM titled "Spite Marriage", with many of the visual gags pulled directly from that earlier film with almost no changes. So as well as Red Skelton did in this, an earlier genius had done it first. Many of the best sight gags were lifted note-for-note from Keaton. The two films differ greatly in their sub-plots, but the core premise is the same. If you liked this movie, you should seek out the earlier film; a lot of it is genuinely funny. Although not Keaton at his peak (he was hampered by the MGM-imposed studio system), any Keaton is worth seeing.

I generally find Red Skelton films entertaining, so I poured a glass of wine and tee'd up "I Dood It" on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

Red Skelton was his usual great. I understand that Buster Keaton was his coach for some of the slapstick, and it showed. But one genius plus one genius equals some great comedy, so that was okay with me.

However, I was really blown away by three performers I didn't know very well. Eleanor Powell was a fine actress and a fantastic dancer. Check out her lasso dance near the beginning of the film. Absolutely amazing! And then later in the film comes Hazel Scott, a phenomenal jazz pianist who I'd never heard before. Then shortly thereafter we have Lena Horne in her powerful "Jericho" number. Those scenes alone make the movie worth spending a little time on.

There were a lot of musical numbers, too many in fact, and I have to admit I fast forwarded through the more tedious of them. And the plot was -- as many people have mentioned -- disjointed and illogical. But there's enough gold in this film to make it an enjoyable, although certainly not classic, movie event.

Red Skelton musical comedy that also happens to be Eleanor Powell's final leading role at MGM. Skelton plays a loser totally obsessed with an actress (Powell). He achieves every stalker's dream and becomes engaged to her because she thinks he's someone else and wants to make her ex jealous. For Skelton fans, he doesn't have any particularly memorable bits here. Most of the better stuff is ripped off from an old Buster Keaton movie. Not even Keaton's best material, either. The highlights of the movie revolve around Eleanor Powell, including a classic lasso dancing number near the beginning of the film. Her other numbers are clips from Honolulu and Born to Dance. Also some nice musical numbers from Lena Horne and Hazel Scott.

It's a watchable movie but nothing special. The comedy is especially weak. And what was with that tacked-on Nazi saboteur plot? I would suggest watching the first ten minutes or so for the Powell number and then fast-forwarding to whenever you see someone singing or dancing. The rest is nothing to bother with.

I have this notion that the thirties was a great pressure cooker for movies, during which time all sorts of experiments were tried. Out of that period came the genres we know today, plus the great invention of Noir, uniquely American.

So I've been watching lots of 30s movies, not because they are good or particularly enjoyable. But because you can see the genotype of today's movies, which is to say I can see the origins of how we all dream and mostly imagine.

Now here is an anomaly, a 30s movie made in the 40s. I can only imagine that it was to feed the war-starved theaters. It is a remake and "borrows" musical numbers from a couple films that really were made in the 30s.

It is a spliced picture, three movies combined, something that was common in the 30's.

One movie is a stage show. Simple and straightforward. Lots of variety here.

A second movie is a comedic fold: a movie where all the players are involved in some way in a play (different than the earlier mentioned performances and more like "Gone with the Wind"). Lots of physical humor here. Red Skelton's technique was to perform a comedic motion (like rolling his eyes after getting bonked) in an exaggerated fashion and then abruptly stop before it finished and look at the audience with a big grin. It was humor about humor, a not very sophisticated but an effective fold that would grow into what we have today (and call irony).

The third movie has a wartime saboteur. Because the "fold," the notion of the play within the play, is explicit here, the explosion is to blow up the theater (and somehow simultaneously threaten the nation by mechanisms unexplained).

Its a mess, these three parts not integrated in any way.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.