An Evening Alone (1938) User Reviews

Dependable

[boblipton · 7/10 · 21 April 2008]

This is another strong entry in the always dependable 'Joe Doakes' series of shorts that Benchley wrote and starred in for MGM and occasionally Paramount in the 1930s and 1940s. They took two forms: in the first, Benchley would lecture confusedly on some subject that his character would seem to know nothing about, like the Oscar-winning HOW TO SLEEP. In the second, he would play Joe Doakes, who would go about creating havoc in his ordinary way. This is an episode of the second; the Missus has gone out, leaving him alone to do catch up on those tasks he has put off, like destroying the cuckoo clock and filling the house with smoke. As usual, Benchley is low key, befuddled and amusing.

The main point of this live-action short seems to be that cuckoo clocks are easy to . . .

[pixrox1 · 6/10 · 28 June 2021]

. . . break, and almost impossible to fix yourself once you do mess them up. This probably has something to do with their devious Bavarian engineering. Just the other day I was watching another gadget made in this same nefarious region featured on a local news segment. An innocent lady was driving her Mercedes SUV along a famous Interstate highway, which happens to connect Chicago to S Ontario, Canada. Then, just because it was raining five or eight inches in a few hours, some sort of pump failed on her vehicle, filling the freeway with streaming water and prompting the local youths to begin using it as a swimming hole. As police scuba divers search these murky waters for various sorts of victims, it all goes to remind viewers that whether it's cuckoo clocks or road vehicles, it's best to stay away from Prussian manufacturing.

Cute Benchley Short

[Michael_Elliott · 1 May 2011]

Evening Alone, An (1938)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Better than expected short from Robert Benchley has him playing Joe Doakes, a husband who gets left home alone when his wife decides to go out with a girlfriend. This short is a warning to wives about what could happen if you leave your husband alone. Joe starts off wanting to learn about some household items and starts off with the cuckoo clocks, which he ends up breaking. He then decides to start a small fire, which grows out of control and even smoking his favorite pipe doesn't work out. AN EVENING ALONE features the type of humor fans have come to expect from Benchley but I've always been very hit and miss on his work. I thought this film was certainly much better than most because there are some very funny gags that get carried out to a good effect. One happens when Benchley bites into an orange and gets juice all over himself. He must then find a place to wipe his mouth. Another funny gag has him reading a horror story and then getting scared to close a window. Both of these gags get a couple big laughs and they alone make this film worth sitting through.