I recently bought several DVD collections of shorts from both Vitaphone (Warner Brothers) as well as MGM. I have been surprised at the quality difference in the two. While Warner/Vitaphone was a top studio, MGM was often called the 'Tiffany Studio'--the best of the best. Well, when it came to short, this certainly is NOT the case and most of the MGM shorts are pretty terrible...especially the comedies. MGM never did all that well with slapstick and goofy comedies and helped to wreck the careers of the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton--mostly because they never had good gag writers. Never is this more evident than in the shorts...and most, like "Wild People" are just dumb.
The story begins with Jans and Whalen being sent from the radio station off to New Guinea, as the head of the station is apparently nuts! He wants a variety show broadcast all the way from this third world nation...why, I have no idea!
When the story switches to New Guinea, NONE of the people or sets look the least bit like New Guinea. Instead, you have lots of white people dressed up like a live action version of "The Flintstones". They then perform several acts that are just terrible and a Panther Woman dance that is highly reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich's "Hot Voodoo" number in "Blonde Venus" (also from 1932)....which, when you think about it, makes no sense because it's a RADIO broadcast.
The bottom line is that I never even came close to laughing even once and the film is just plain unfunny...period. The only mildly interesting thing about the film is its use of Two-Color Technicolor, but it's so badly faded you can barely tell it was once a color film.
The story begins with Jans and Whalen being sent from the radio station off to New Guinea, as the head of the station is apparently nuts! He wants a variety show broadcast all the way from this third world nation...why, I have no idea!
When the story switches to New Guinea, NONE of the people or sets look the least bit like New Guinea. Instead, you have lots of white people dressed up like a live action version of "The Flintstones". They then perform several acts that are just terrible and a Panther Woman dance that is highly reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich's "Hot Voodoo" number in "Blonde Venus" (also from 1932)....which, when you think about it, makes no sense because it's a RADIO broadcast.
The bottom line is that I never even came close to laughing even once and the film is just plain unfunny...period. The only mildly interesting thing about the film is its use of Two-Color Technicolor, but it's so badly faded you can barely tell it was once a color film.