Free and Easy (1931)
** (out of 4)
Not to be confused with the Buster Keaton feature that was made the year before, this short from MGM features Edgar Bergen and his puppet Charlie McCarthy playing a hobo and his (what else?) puppet sidekick. The duo hear about a man who just died and left a large treasure buried somewhere in his house so they go to a gypsy girl to try and see if they can locate it. These Bergen/McCarthy shorts are always hit and miss and this one here is one of the weaker entries in the series. It's funny but this thing lasts just over 7-minutes and there's really not a single laugh to be had. I'd say the one highlight, if I had to pick one, was when they're having the gypsy look into the future and a skeleton shows up to which McCarthy says he hasn't a bone to pick with it. The rest of the film has a few cheap jokes that really aren't funny and we get some "haunted" humor, which includes some flying devices and there's even a sequence where they're communicating with the dead. It's common knowledge that MGM sucked dry some of their most talented artists because the studio forced their ways into certain acts. I often wonder if that's what happened to this duo on many of their shorts because they were known for laughter but this here contains none.
** (out of 4)
Not to be confused with the Buster Keaton feature that was made the year before, this short from MGM features Edgar Bergen and his puppet Charlie McCarthy playing a hobo and his (what else?) puppet sidekick. The duo hear about a man who just died and left a large treasure buried somewhere in his house so they go to a gypsy girl to try and see if they can locate it. These Bergen/McCarthy shorts are always hit and miss and this one here is one of the weaker entries in the series. It's funny but this thing lasts just over 7-minutes and there's really not a single laugh to be had. I'd say the one highlight, if I had to pick one, was when they're having the gypsy look into the future and a skeleton shows up to which McCarthy says he hasn't a bone to pick with it. The rest of the film has a few cheap jokes that really aren't funny and we get some "haunted" humor, which includes some flying devices and there's even a sequence where they're communicating with the dead. It's common knowledge that MGM sucked dry some of their most talented artists because the studio forced their ways into certain acts. I often wonder if that's what happened to this duo on many of their shorts because they were known for laughter but this here contains none.