La grande parade du rire

This is a film you can't go wrong with. MGM compiled a salute to the comedy that MGM brought to the big screen over a 40 year period. You'll see its biggest stars performing and they did boast they had more stars than there are in heaven.

Some were admittedly shoehorned in. Case in point Charlie Chaplin who had his own United Artists at the time. He makes a guest appearance in a Marion Davies film.

Or WC Fields who toiled for Paramount and Universal. He did one memorable Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield.

The comedians share equally with MGM stars of drama in some of their comedies. Case in point Clark Gable in Too Hot To Handle and Spencer Tracy in Libeled Lady. And of course William Powell and Myrna Loy.

You can't go wrong with The Big Parade Of Comedy.

This is MGM pulling comedy clips from their vault. It starts from the silent era up to 1948. A narrator describes the silent films. I recognize some of the clips. The big names are Buster Keaton and one non-Tramp Charlie Chaplin scene. It's nice to see some names that I don't know. After twenty minutes, it's on to the talkies. I still don't recognize a few of these comedic actors, but at least, they get to talk. Throughout the compilation show, the jokes aren't hitting as hard with the clips being all cut up. It can feel like the narrator is explaining the jokes. This may interesting introductory show for newbies, but that's about it.

A better title would have been "Our Big Stars and Some Special Effects "... Much of it is just film run backward and sight gags... ie the train scenes at the beginning... smoke going back into the stack, and when the handcart gets out of the way at the last second at the bottom of the mountainside, watch for the big puff of sand right BEFORE the cart moves.. not after. This review would probably be more interesting for those who haven't seen the specific films highlighted here. It's a whole bunch of short clips from their big films. Written, directed, produced by Robert Youngson, who even wrote the lyrics to a lot of the accompanying (bad) songs to the clips. Melodies by Bernard Green... must have taken them about eight minutes during the lunch hour to come up with those songs. Gotta mark this one down... you can skip it if you've seen most of the films involved.

MGM's Big Parade of Comedy is just a random compilation of comedy clips with no point that don't do their stars any justice. They've all appeared in funnier films at other studios. They serve up probably the worst clip from the worst Marx Bros. film (Go West). Couldn't they have used A Night At The Opera instead (that was an MGM film)? They just dredge out any comedy star who just happened to appear in an MGM film - they even dish up a silent Joan Crawford film (now there's a comedienne). The only moments of levity for me were when they showed a compilation of Pete Smith comedy shorts (with Dave O'Brien). It also ends abruptly. I'm thankful someone had the good judgement to put it out of its' misery.

Wow. This collection of clips was disjointed, not funny at all and edited extremely poorly.

Carole Lombard was only shown in one brief clip. She was an extremely talented comedienne and this film did not do her justice at all.

The Jean Harlow clips shown were adequate and they did show one of her funniest scenes (with Marie Dressler in Dinner At Eight).

Cary Grant was shown only briefly. The man was much funnier than the clips led us to believe.

I could go on and on, but my point would remain the same: don't waste your time on this movie. Not only is it poorly made, it is also insanely boring.