Deux nigauds dans la neige

Hit The Ice was Universal Studio's attempt to cash in on the popularity of 20th Century Fox's Sun Valley Serenade which mixed swing music with Sonja Henie's ice skating. Universal didn't have an ice skater of the caliber of Sonja Henie, but they did have Abbott&Costello and Costello on the ice was a sight to see.

As for the swing music, Glenn Miller and his Orchestra were in Sun Valley Serenade and Universal didn't have them either. By this time Glenn Miller had gone to war. So they hired one of the good second line swing orchestras of the period led by violinist Johnny Long. And they also acquired Ginny Simms one of the best female singers from the Forties to appear with Long.

However first and foremost the film is an Abbott&Costello effort and the boys do come through. They're first free lance photographers who take a picture of gangsters Sheldon Leonard, Marc Lawrence, and Joe Sawyer robbing a bank while Leonard is supposed to be in a hospital. Leonard's set up careful alibi about that even with doctor Patric Knowles and nurse Elyse Knox suspicious. Costello's camera work threatens to blow up some best laid plans.

The whole cast winds up at Sun Valley during the ski season, setting up a most excellent chase sequence with the boys and the crooks going down slope. We're not quite sure who's chasing who, but the loot from the robbery is involved.

Bud and Lou do some very good work. Sad to say that the film was badly edited and there are some plot problems because of it. Towards the end you see the boys in tuxedos waiting for Ginny Simms at a train station with no real explanation as to why they're in the formal wear. Simms also gets to play straight girl for the boys, part of her role is to vamp Costello and she does a good job. All that beauty and an incredible set of pipes.

Hit The Ice is not one of their best efforts, but still better than some of what they did in the Fifties and should please Bud and Lou's strong legion of fans the world over.

Photographers Flash and Tubby believe they have land a paying job when they agree to cover a group of men coming out of a bank. Little do they know that the men are bank robbers who have mistaken the two for hired guns, booked to cover the entrance during the job. They discovery this too late and suddenly find themselves suspected of the robbery themselves. With only the photographs they took as leverage, the two follow the crooks to a mountain ski resort where they plan to expose them and clear their own names.

Abbott & Costello are always a duo I come back to but yet they are also a duo that tend to deliver solid amusement rather than great films. Hit the Ice is another one of those because it is roundly "ok" even if it does have some bits that capture why people love these two. The plot is a simple affair with the usual misunderstandings and scrapes along the way but it does work, providing the love interest for Costello to flirt with and also the tough guys for him to face off against. There are a few routines that are good fun like the "teller" one or the bit where Costello packs and unpacks repeatedly, while the pratfalls and chases are amusing and are done with energy. It doesn't have enough to be considered a great film or anything but it is amusing enough to please fans and also children.

The film is padded far too much with musical numbers. You expect one or maybe two but there are loads of them here and they never feel like anything other than filler. Abbott and Costello are both on pretty good form here, they feel like they are working well off one another – with Costello in particular putting effort into his falls and double-takes. Simms' songs perhaps don't appeal but she certainly does – stunningly beautiful and she has an easy screen presence that helps as well – I feel for Knox who has to compete but doesn't really. Leonard is fun as the main villain while Knowles is about as vanilla and dull as he could have been.

Overall this is an OK piece of comedy that fans will like as well as kids. There are a couple of funny routines and, although it has too much of it, the pratfall-style comedy is OK too. The musical numbers are overused and slow the film down but at least you get to look at Simms while they are on (well, mostly). Solid but unremarkable.

I would like these sorts of movies a lot better if they didn't have the musical scenes. I watch these movies strictly to laugh. Certainly plenty of scenes made me laugh (namely the snowball scene). One can imagine being a fairly intelligent guy like Abbott's character always having to deal with a brainless sap like Costello's character and how annoying it would be.

So, even though the singing drags the movie down, I recommend it overall. Pretty entertaining.

Tied up for a while indeed...

PS: Sheldon Leonard, who played Silky, later produced "The Danny Thomas Show" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show". He also provided his voice to Robert McKimson's cartoons "Kiddin' the Kitten" and "A Peck o' Trouble" as a lazy cat who tries to make a kitten do his work.

I've always liked this Abbott & Costello outing, probably ranking it just in their top ten - but I really don't know why! The story is so contrived and abounding with plot leaps and non-sequiteurs I wonder what everyone was thinking about in the making and release of this. I think it must be the fun and inconsequential atmosphere created so effortlessly by Universal studios during the War that brings me back to re-watch Hit The Ice every few years, along with my love of A&C of course.

Basically: 2 photographers are mixed up in bank robbery, the main perp of which is laid up as ill in hospital as an alibi. His doctor is going to Sun Valley to take up a new post, so the gangsters tag along with him taking the suspicious nurse in tow - plus A&C trying to clear their names. Ignoring all the plot inanities along the way, this would be a pleasant but ordinary comedy with ditto songs - which were beautifully produced and evocative of the time, but not very catchy. But A&C's packing and re-packing the grip routine still holds up well even with the overly childish conclusion to it. It's also a film that can be watched credulously at 10 years old, in middle age the link to the Keystone Kops is sadly more apparent - who finds them a Laugh Riot nowadays? On the other hand compared to Blazing Saddles (the personal yardstick that I regularly use to gauge the worth of various films) this is a beautiful work of Art - seriously!

So the bottom line is if like me you can overlook plot and you like A&C then you'll do alright, if not, well, it's definitely not their best anyway!

...but dangerously close.

However, there is still enough here to keep the grin on the face and there is still a high production value within the structure, if only the same could be said of the writing! I tend to feel with Abbott & Costello movies it pays to take a break for a few months and then go back to further viewings refreshed and not feeling a sense of seen this before repetitiveness.

This one sees the boys as photographers who unwittingly get mixed up in a bank robbery and have to flee to a ski resort to hopefully prove their innocence. The usual pratfalls are abound as Tubby constantly loses his pants, gets his bum set on fire, skis with a grizzly bear, and of course he tries to woo the pretty lady by bluffing he can play the piano. Music comes courtesy of Ginny Simms and the Johnny Long Orchestra, with stoic supporting acting duties falling to Patric Knowles, Elyse Knox and the always great Sheldon Leonard as the chief villain.

Not close to being in the top five outings from the guys, but certainly an above average offering showing glimpses of just why they really were a special talent back in the day. 6/10