If only the time went by in this movie like the title of the fairly amusing opening number. Eddie Cantor and Joan Davis are reunited from "Show Business", as a married couple retiring from vaudeville to open a restaurant in their charming old American home. But the snooty neighbors boycott the restaurant, forcing Cantor and Davis to move out. But while the auction of their belongings is going on, their son (Bobby Driscoll) finds an old document which declares Cantor's ancestor (previously thought of as a traitor) as an American hero praised on paper by none other than Washington, Jefferson and Franklin. The couple go to Washington to prove the document correct and find out that the government owes them billions of dollars! This makes them ripe for gangsters and a kidnapping plot.
This could have been a very amusing comedy with songs, but instead of slapstick, the comedy simply ends up violent. Poor Cantor is thrown through a glass door not once but twice, and the set-up for a finale to rival "The Fuller Brush Girl" ends up sadly humorless. Davis is funnier with verbal humor, not slapstick, although there is a funny moment where Davis, cooking eggs, gets spooked by their resemblance to her husband. The opening number, in spite of its already then dated black-face, features some good dancing by Davis who sadly can't match Cantor in the singing department. There's also the "Brooklyn Love Song", a song I doubt that anybody across the Williamsburg, Manhattan or Brooklyn Bridges will ever sing. An outtake from "Show Business" proves pointless and simply stops the story cold. Some good moments from Mabel Paige, Fritz Feld and Sheldon Leonard (typecast as a gangster) help rise the film above total mediocrity. It is sad that talented and likable performers like Cantor and Davis couldn't get a better written script.
This could have been a very amusing comedy with songs, but instead of slapstick, the comedy simply ends up violent. Poor Cantor is thrown through a glass door not once but twice, and the set-up for a finale to rival "The Fuller Brush Girl" ends up sadly humorless. Davis is funnier with verbal humor, not slapstick, although there is a funny moment where Davis, cooking eggs, gets spooked by their resemblance to her husband. The opening number, in spite of its already then dated black-face, features some good dancing by Davis who sadly can't match Cantor in the singing department. There's also the "Brooklyn Love Song", a song I doubt that anybody across the Williamsburg, Manhattan or Brooklyn Bridges will ever sing. An outtake from "Show Business" proves pointless and simply stops the story cold. Some good moments from Mabel Paige, Fritz Feld and Sheldon Leonard (typecast as a gangster) help rise the film above total mediocrity. It is sad that talented and likable performers like Cantor and Davis couldn't get a better written script.