Thursday, August 5, 2010

My Favorite Blonde (1942)


Directed by Sidney Lanfield
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Universal)

Good Hope vehicle in which he becomes involved with British spy Madeleine Carroll. Hope has a stand up act with a penguin, Percy (who, by the way, steals every scene in which he appears), and when Carroll is running away from German spies she chooses his dressing room in which to hide. They spend the rest of the movie on the run in a series of comedy misadventures. They ride a train, steal a plane, take a bus to a Chicago Teamsters picnic and eventually end up in LA. There are some memorable bits, like when Hope thinks he is losing his mind on the train, but it tends to become episodic and seems much longer than its relatively short running time. Nonetheless, Hope is in his prime, and I caught glimpses of his influence on every one from Don Knotts to Woody Allen.

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