Rising director George Stevens had already directed the long-time team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey when he was assigned a second film for them, this sometimes boring farce that looses interest when they are not on screen or when young leading lady Betty Grable isn't showing off those sexy gams which made her the toast of soldiers a decade later. The success of "The Thin Man" made murder with a bit of comedy thrown in ripe for rip-off, and in the case of "The Nitwits", that is obvious what is happening here. Grable is the secretary to lecherous boss Hale Hamilton whose wife (Evelyn Brent) has been receiving threats from a stalker only known as "the Black Widow". Before you know it, somebody gets a big hole in the head, and everybody in the plot is suspect, including the too dumb to hurt a fly comedy duo.
Wheeler and Grable get an adorable musical number where they spin around down a flight of circular staircase. While the lyrics to "Music in My Heart" (by Dorothy Fields) aren't a threat to "With a Song in My Heart" or "There's Music in You", it is a cute moment in an otherwise occasionally tedious film. The movie comes alive during comedy moments where the boys take center stage, particularly a hysterically funny moment where a handcuffed Woolsey shows a cop how to get his hands free. The simple use of a tennis ball as comic prop may have you in hysterics.
There's a bit of racial comedy thrown in with the presence of Willie Best as the slow-moving young black man who becomes a victim of Woolsey's burglar trap. I'd rather see the cops made out as buffoons than a young black man continuously be forced to play the dumb sap who is only happy if there's a hidden mattress somewhere, a bottle of liquor around. or a crap game going on. It is obvious that in the three years between "Hold Em' Jail" (Grable's previous pairing with Wheeler) and "The Nitwits" that she's grown up a lot, not only in age, but in her singing and dancing abilities as well. This retains amusement when Wheeler, Woolsey and Grable are on screen, but downloads itself into boredom when they are not and becomes something pretty predictable.
Wheeler and Grable get an adorable musical number where they spin around down a flight of circular staircase. While the lyrics to "Music in My Heart" (by Dorothy Fields) aren't a threat to "With a Song in My Heart" or "There's Music in You", it is a cute moment in an otherwise occasionally tedious film. The movie comes alive during comedy moments where the boys take center stage, particularly a hysterically funny moment where a handcuffed Woolsey shows a cop how to get his hands free. The simple use of a tennis ball as comic prop may have you in hysterics.
There's a bit of racial comedy thrown in with the presence of Willie Best as the slow-moving young black man who becomes a victim of Woolsey's burglar trap. I'd rather see the cops made out as buffoons than a young black man continuously be forced to play the dumb sap who is only happy if there's a hidden mattress somewhere, a bottle of liquor around. or a crap game going on. It is obvious that in the three years between "Hold Em' Jail" (Grable's previous pairing with Wheeler) and "The Nitwits" that she's grown up a lot, not only in age, but in her singing and dancing abilities as well. This retains amusement when Wheeler, Woolsey and Grable are on screen, but downloads itself into boredom when they are not and becomes something pretty predictable.