Fun on a Week-End

I'm not quite sure how I'll reach the 600 required characters for this review, because all I wish to say is that this is such a fun, witty, rather zany film! It's in a very similar vein to Bringing Up Baby, with I personally think a similar level of wit. My family hates Bringing Up Baby (which I personally love,) but they enjoyed this movie very much. Although it's fast-paced, the dialouge is a bit easier to follow than Bringing Up Baby, You have to go in to watching the film accepting the fact that it is silly, and you will have a wonderful time. It's most definitely being added to my family's favorite movies list! I only wish it was available to get on DVD! We currently can only find it on TCM.

Starring Eddie Braken, Priscilla Lane, Tom Conway, and a dog who has a habit of chewing every table leg -- with a hilarious bit with Fritz Feld as a temperamental pianist.

I noticed that several of the reviews for "Fun on a Weekend" are glowing. Unfortunately, there also were some who definitely disliked it...and I tend towards their opinion about this movie...mostly because the plot is so difficult to believe and the characters are pretty dishonest.

Pete and Nancy (Eddie Bracken and Priscilla Lane) are both homeless and out of work and are living on the beach...where they both meet. Pete has an unusual notion...that if you ACT like you are rich and important, people will treat you better and riches will await you. Of course, a lot of grifters have the same notions! Regardless, they do become cons, of sorts, and begin working their way up in society by lying about their background...which made it hard for me to actually care about these characters.

Overall, a film that tries very hard but unlikable characters, a dog who makes no sense at all (he eats table legs...ha, ha) and a ridiculous plot. It's not one I'd wish to see again.

It's a wonder that EDDIE BRACKEN and PRISCILLA LANE manage to hold their heads high and infuse some much needed laughs into this ridiculous attempt at screwball comedy in the late '40s. They're such pros that with a better script they may have managed to make this one work.

The only comedy highlight is ALLEN JENKINS who manages to con quite a few laughs out of his role as an unbelieving bystander, and FRITZ FELD as a pianist whose act is always inadvertently getting ruined by Bracken and Lane and their Great Dane who loves to chew on furniture legs.

It's an obviously low-budget poverty row production that has to be the nadir of Bracken and Lane's respective careers. Priscilla was making a comeback after a three year absence and had lost none of her charm, but her role is enough to sink the abilities of any actress. No wonder she retired after one more film. Bracken is less frenetic than usual but also has an impossible role to play.

Sorry, two thumbs down on this one. All those rear projection shots are too distracting for comfort, indicating just how low the budget was to produce such a farce.

"This is getting to be too much," exclaims one unfortunate character. The viewer will agree.

Priscilla Lane and Eddie Bracken meet on the beach, where they've both slept. They're broke, but Bracken has ideas about how to meet and influence the wealthy into getting what they want. He doesn't have the nerve to do so. Miss Lane has the nerve, so they go into partnership by bulge and bluster, their only ally a Great Dane who likes to eat furniture legs.

Andrew L. Stone wrote, produced, and directed this comedy. He was one of the auteurs in Hollywood in this era, and reasonably successful; from 1944 through 1972, he directed a score of movies, few of them major, but usually quite profitable, within a wide range of genres. He died in 1999, aged 96.

There's quite a cast of farceurs here, but the movie is timed a trifle slow lending it an air of anxiety that reflects the threat of Bracken and Miss Lane's plans collapsing. The best role belongs to Fritz Feld as a paranoid pianist, but there are moments for Tom Conway, Allen Jenkins, Clarence Kolb, and Arthur Treacher.

Borrowing quite liberally from the Mark Twain short story classic The Million Pound Note, Fun On A Weekend doesn't even give protagonists Eddie Bracken and Priscilla Lane even a note for a $1.25. But what they do give him is the incredibly posh and WASPy name of Peterson Price Porterhouse and the film puts forth the proposition that if you've got a high falutin' name like that doors just automatically open with the right gift of gab.

Bracken and Lane are a pair of tourists on vacation in Florida, but who apparently planned poorly because they've got no money between them and can't even get a meal at Allen Jenkins greasy spoon restaurant on the beach front. But with his name and the fact that Bracken and Lane decide to pretend they're married, they go off on a wild revolving con game getting all kinds of things charged to their non-existent credit because the rich and famous think they're two of them.

Fun On A Weekend was an independent film shot on a shoestring and released by United Artists. However that doesn't detract one bit from the witty lines and incredible situations that Bracken and Lane bluff their way through. Along the way they pick up a big boxer dog who adopts them and who likes to chew very high class mahogany style wood. What he does to concert pianist Fritz Feld's piano is positively hilarious.

This film is an undiscovered comedy gem, I'm so happy TCM decided to air it, hopefully it will be back soon.