Hook, Line and Sinker (1930)

Movie title: Hook, Line and Sinker
Starring: Wheeler & Woolsey and Dorothy Lee
My rating: 
Year: 1930

Although the DVD cover proclaims Wheeler and Woolsey as "one of America's most beloved comedy duos", they are not one of the best remembered. As a reminder (or an introduction), Bert Wheeler is the younger, wavy-haired member of the team and Robert Woolsey is the one who looks like the offspring of George Burns and Groucho Marx, with the cigar, glasses and the part in the center of his hair that looks like it was done using an X-Acto knife. They made quite a large number of films together in the 1930s, but the team hasn't really stood the test of time the way that Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, other comedy teams of that time have. The few films of theirs that I have seen are mostly inoffensive -- nothing spectacular, but an entertaining diversion for a couple of hours.

HOOK, LINE AND SINKER fulfills that description in everything but the time-factor (this movie is only sixty-two minutes long). The plot can be summarized quite quickly. Two insurance salesmen quit their gig and get into the hotel business after meeting a young heiress. Naturally, a bunch of scam artists, thieves and crooks show up for the hotel's grand re-opening, intent on stealing all the goods they can get their hands on. The DVD box blurb refers to the villains as "oddball characters", but I found them mostly bland and uninteresting. The one thing I kept thinking about was that the "Duchess" character really ought to have been played by Thelma Todd.

However, the story is mostly irrelevant. The movie is basically an excuse to have Wheeler and Woolsey stand next to each other (occasionally with a third person) and fire off one-liners at each other. This is a typical exchange:

Policeman: "You broke a traffic law!"
Woolsey: "Can't you make another one?"

The comedy is very vaudevillian in nature and is a corny mixture of puns, word play and simple misunderstandings. The production is very stagey, with the plot used mainly to move the characters from one set to another to mix up the background on which the jokes are told. If you're in the mood for this, it can be quite enjoyable. If you have a low tolerance for cheap wisecracks and dumb humor, then you may want to stay away. Personally, I enjoyed the film. But that said, I only picked it up because I discovered it selling for an entire dollar. I can't imagine myself watching it many more times.

The DVD edition I'm reviewing is the Digiview Productions release. The picture quality is quite bad, but it's hard to say whether the fault lies in laziness/cheapness at the DVD company or the age of the material. Certainly, there exist other movies from this era in much better condition, but one can't tell whether this print simply had a harder time than others over the last seventy-five years. The picture is blurry and out of focus in spots. The framing seems a bit off too, so there are a few scenes where the actors' heads are cut off. The sound quality is also not stellar, being tinny, muffled and scratchy.

That said, this is not a CITIZEN KANE where the viewer's inner film student will be scanning the background looking for hitherto unseen details. This is just a cheaply made, quick comedy where the poorness of the DVD doesn't really detract much from the overall experience. On the other hand, there were a few gags rendered nonsensical by the medium. For example, at one point a woman con artist is walking up a flight of steps when out of nowhere there is a smallish explosion behind her. I presume we were supposed to see a grenade or the like falling out of her handbag, but with the picture quality being so poor, it looks like she just stepped on a landmine.

Another difficult-to-see gag occurs when Wheeler and the heiress love-interest (played by Dorothy Lee, a frequent collaborator with W/W) haggle over how many children they should have in married life. They keep punching up numbers on an old cash register, but the poor DVD picture quality leaves the audience bewildered as to what figures they are discussing.

The more I watch the films of Wheeler and Woolsey, the more I like them. I can't see them ever seriously rivaling my affection for other comedy stars of that era, but they have a kind of innocent charm to them. HOOK, LINE AND SINKER is a pleasant way of spending an hour.