Going against their usual formula of slapstick, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are barely funny in this post-war comedy that seems to focus more on pathos then on gags. More naive than dumb, Lou is a small town buffoon who ends up in the big city selling the Hercules, the newest contraption for home cleaning and for some reason begins to think that he has the ability to read minds. But Abbott is the head of the vacuum cleaner company, and has very little to do. Well comedy teams often took the different steps to change their image or type of material, in the case of Bud and Lou, it really didn't work. A lot of the gags are familiar, including one involving a math problem that I am sure I saw in a Wheeler and Woolsey comedy that was most likely made a decade before this.
This is strictly for Abbott and Costello fans, and even they might be slightly disappointed in the change of format. This certainly is not in the league with the two Fuller Brush movies made with famous comic redheads just a few years later, although there are attempts to toss in gags that would be perfected in those two Columbia classics. There is one amusing sequence with Margaret Dumont as a befuddled society matron (what else?) where Lou practically destroys her gorgeous all white living room, all white that is until he gets there.
In spite of the disappointing changing format, there is a great supporting cast, most notably Mary Gordon as Lou's devoted mama, George Cleveland as his uncle who made it big in the bug city and might be country bound if Lou doesn't work out and Jacqueline DeWit as a statuesque vamp who slips into something more comfortable in order to get Lou to do her bidding. This ends up being a missed opportunity that might have worked for Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante in the early 1930's but lands with a thud in post war times. If Hercules held up the world with this, Zeus would have disowned him.
This is strictly for Abbott and Costello fans, and even they might be slightly disappointed in the change of format. This certainly is not in the league with the two Fuller Brush movies made with famous comic redheads just a few years later, although there are attempts to toss in gags that would be perfected in those two Columbia classics. There is one amusing sequence with Margaret Dumont as a befuddled society matron (what else?) where Lou practically destroys her gorgeous all white living room, all white that is until he gets there.
In spite of the disappointing changing format, there is a great supporting cast, most notably Mary Gordon as Lou's devoted mama, George Cleveland as his uncle who made it big in the bug city and might be country bound if Lou doesn't work out and Jacqueline DeWit as a statuesque vamp who slips into something more comfortable in order to get Lou to do her bidding. This ends up being a missed opportunity that might have worked for Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante in the early 1930's but lands with a thud in post war times. If Hercules held up the world with this, Zeus would have disowned him.
