Don't Play Bridge with Your Wife

Don't Play Bridge with the Wife (1933)

** (out of 4)

This Mack Sennett produced short has a good idea but sadly it's just not that funny with the exception of one great sequence. The title pretty much tells you everything you need to know with the only catch being that we get to see couples playing bridge during three different eras. We get cave people, Henry the VIII and people of the 1930's. DON'T PLAY BRIDGE WITH THE WIFE probably made bridge players in 1933 laugh but when viewed today the thing is pretty lifeless and drawn out. The first two sequences go by fairly quickly but the third just drags to the point where I think it would have been better to just have this be a one-reeler. The comedy very seldomly works and I'd say that most of the gags just fall well short of where they're aiming. The one exception is a terrific sequence where a man gets on a swing to try and sneak his woman out of a second story window. This sequence contains some very nice stunt work but it's also quite funny as he tries to get the woman and her belongings out to his car. I'd say this scene alone is worth sitting through the whole short for.

A million years ago, when everyone spoke Pig Latin, they played bridge badly. In the days of Henry VIII they played bridge badly. And in the 1930s they played bridge, always badly and with lots of arguments. The King usually won. Even if he had to trump his partner's ace.

This is one of the best of the Mack Sennett sound films that didn't star Bing Crosby or W.C. Fields, mostly because of the gags -- there's a lovely one involving a swing. It also has more of a story than most, as Cornelius Keefe and Nora Lane get married -- and lose a lot of money playing bridge on their honeymoon. They are both pretty stiff in their performances, but the situations are funny.