Nickelette, The (1932)
** (out of 4)
Fair short from Warner explains to (then) current viewers what it was like when movies were just a nickel. The film starts off showing us some of the signs (No Spitting on Floors) we'd see at a theater and then we move onto the type of films and we also get a live musician doing a song. Had this short been an actual documentary it might have worked out a lot better but we basically have another example of a sound movie poking fun at silents. Leo Donnelly narrates some rather poor dialogue aimed at a few different silent movies (including one with Charley Chase). I'm not sure how well these jokes went over in 1932 but they're pretty flat today as is the entire movie. None of the narration is funny and the way their presented isn't any better either. I'd certainly be willing to go along with spoofing silent movies if what they were saying or doing was anywhere near as good as the item they're laughing at. The problem here is that even the worse Chase film is better than this thing so, naturally, this movie just doesn't get the job done.