How Dagwood Bumstead manages to keep his job after so many stupid errors is beyond me. How Blondie manages to keep the house from blowing up is also way beyond me. She can't even figure out that a stuck door is simply locked, not stuck, and visiting pest Alvin (Danny Mummert) proves that he is way smarter than her. Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake are back for the fourth installment in one of the longest comedy series, an influence for many similar structures utilized in 1950's and 60's sitcoms.
Blondie is tricked into thinking that Baby Dumpling is a genius (with an IQ quotient she mistakenly believes to be his temperature) and enrolls him in school. The devoted Daisy waits for him to get out and gets involved in a chase with the local dog catchers that could have been a lot funnier but wraps up too fast. Dagwood becomes involved in a scam with a real estate developer, looses his job, and becomes a suspect in a supposed kidnapping. The first half of the film is filled with slapstick and witty lines from the precocious Mummert and the sardonic Larry Sims (Baby Dumpling) who seems to be like Don Rickles trapped in a tot's body. The second half, however, becomes much more serious with a storyline involving Daisy and a little girl in a wheelchair (future child star Peggy Ann Garner) culminating in a very touching finale.
Other memorable moments include postman Irving Bacon's attempt to avoid a collision with Dagwood, boss Jonathan Hale's attempts to cool off after discovering Dagwood's latest blunder, and Blondie's encounter with a door-to-door genius tester who is really selling psychology encyclopedias. I truly would like to see the original release prints of these films which don't have a five minute preview of what's going to happen before the sitcom like song opening begins. They would seem truer to the time period in which these films were made rather than trying to update them to whenever they were released for T.V. viewing.
Blondie is tricked into thinking that Baby Dumpling is a genius (with an IQ quotient she mistakenly believes to be his temperature) and enrolls him in school. The devoted Daisy waits for him to get out and gets involved in a chase with the local dog catchers that could have been a lot funnier but wraps up too fast. Dagwood becomes involved in a scam with a real estate developer, looses his job, and becomes a suspect in a supposed kidnapping. The first half of the film is filled with slapstick and witty lines from the precocious Mummert and the sardonic Larry Sims (Baby Dumpling) who seems to be like Don Rickles trapped in a tot's body. The second half, however, becomes much more serious with a storyline involving Daisy and a little girl in a wheelchair (future child star Peggy Ann Garner) culminating in a very touching finale.
Other memorable moments include postman Irving Bacon's attempt to avoid a collision with Dagwood, boss Jonathan Hale's attempts to cool off after discovering Dagwood's latest blunder, and Blondie's encounter with a door-to-door genius tester who is really selling psychology encyclopedias. I truly would like to see the original release prints of these films which don't have a five minute preview of what's going to happen before the sitcom like song opening begins. They would seem truer to the time period in which these films were made rather than trying to update them to whenever they were released for T.V. viewing.