Man-I-Cured (1941) User Reviews

Delightful Confusion

[boblipton · 8/10 · 14 October 2019]

Robert Smith, wants to get married to hotel manicurist Joan Barclay. This will never do for the nephew of a man with an incompetent butler! Leon and wife Eva Puck head to the hotel to stop the wedding. There he mistakes manicurist Dorothy Granger -- yes, the same Dorothy Granger who usually played his wife in his long-running RKO series -- for Smith's fiancee. Leon and she have encountered each other before and she's glad to see him back, which annoys her current boyfriend, house detective Tom Kennedy.

That's an awful lot to cram into 20 minutes, along with Leon's blithering and dithering, sticking women into trunks and Dorothy crouching on top of a shower. When it comes to well-timed comedy gags, the more the merrier say I, and this sets them up and knocks them down very well. It's particularly good to see Miss Granger do a goodly percentage of the gags. Usually all she got to do in the series was shout at Leon and occasionally bust some ceramic bric-a-brac on his head.

Put her in a box, tie her with a ribbon, and throw her in the deep blue sea....

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 21 November 2014]

That almost literally happens here as Leon Errol, mistaking his nephew's fiancée for a manicurist who threatened a peaceful trip with his wife, throws a towel around her and tosses her in a trunk which may or may not be on its way to Cuba. Errol's peaceful slumber had been interrupted by a call from his nephew informing him of his marriage to a manicurist (who just happens to work with the one he's avoiding) and when they all end up in the same hotel, pandemonium erupts. House detective Tom Kennedy ends up on Errol's case, thinking there's some hanky panky going on with his girl (the other manicurist), and everybody ends up being shoved around inside one door and out the other, making this much like a Keystone Cops short of the silent era (recreated in "High Button Shoes" on Broadway), and giving Errol a very funny exit gag. There isn't much time to catch up on your breathing after laughing at this one, making this a delight and one of Errol's very best shorts.

Among Leon Errol's Best Short Comedies

[Snow Leopard · 16 August 2001]

This is among the best of Leon Errol's short comedies in which he plays a hen-pecked but conniving husband. Here he plays his character to good effect, alternating nicely between being obsequious and being devious, and squeezing the most out of the material.

The story starts out with Leon determined to stop his nephew from marrying a hotel manicurist, but soon it's Leon who's in trouble of all kinds. The situation quickly gets very complicated and silly, and Errol is in his element, using his facial expressions, his mannerisms, and his lines to build up the increasing absurdity of his predicament.

Errol's short comedies are not so well-known anymore, but most of them were entertaining, efficiently-crafted movies. "Man-I-Cured" is among the best of them; it has some very good moments, and is definitely worth a look.