Pauper boy improbably meets the prince. They discover they look alike. Just for laughs, the pauper dresses up in prince gear, while the prince gets greased up to look like a pauper boy.
'Fore ya know it, the king dies, and the fake prince becomes king under the guidance of evil Duke of Earl (Claude Rains). Meanwhile, the actual prince has been tossed back into Shantytown to be abused by all the smelly, toothless Brits who crawl out of the sewer on a daily basis.
Switched identity plots are as old as The Mayflower. This version is harmless fun for pre-teen boys, esp if you don't mind seeing Baron MacLane angrily abuse a kid every 15 minutes or so.
The problem for me is that the teenage Mauch boys play their parts like half-wit 8 year olds. I haven't read the Twain novel so I have no idea how old the characters are supposed to be. They were both terrible actors and they got on my nerves. Frankly, I had no sympathy for either of them.
Speaking of bad acting. Over the course of his career I'd say Errol Flynn more than proved he could act, whether or not he was wearing tights. But here he's rubber-facing as though nobody told him they'd invented talkies.
HIs swordplay is the only fun part of the movies for me.
On the whole, I liked this plot a lot more when it was filmed as The Prisoner of Zenda or even Trading Places.
'Fore ya know it, the king dies, and the fake prince becomes king under the guidance of evil Duke of Earl (Claude Rains). Meanwhile, the actual prince has been tossed back into Shantytown to be abused by all the smelly, toothless Brits who crawl out of the sewer on a daily basis.
Switched identity plots are as old as The Mayflower. This version is harmless fun for pre-teen boys, esp if you don't mind seeing Baron MacLane angrily abuse a kid every 15 minutes or so.
The problem for me is that the teenage Mauch boys play their parts like half-wit 8 year olds. I haven't read the Twain novel so I have no idea how old the characters are supposed to be. They were both terrible actors and they got on my nerves. Frankly, I had no sympathy for either of them.
Speaking of bad acting. Over the course of his career I'd say Errol Flynn more than proved he could act, whether or not he was wearing tights. But here he's rubber-facing as though nobody told him they'd invented talkies.
HIs swordplay is the only fun part of the movies for me.
On the whole, I liked this plot a lot more when it was filmed as The Prisoner of Zenda or even Trading Places.