Sorry, boys and girls, but IMHO this is the first one that jumps the shark, that is to say, more and more shorts after this become slow, claustrophobic, corny, obvious, and dumb. Dr Hugo, you may not be aware that the joke " You stole our wives, you horse thieves " is probably the third oldest joke in human history, but it is, and perhaps the washed-up vaudevillian who got that into the script was so happy to fob off that garbage that he fled the studio that day to continue his bender at the nearest bar. Compare the girls' dialog in this one to, say, the wives in Dizzy Doctors: the wives in Dizzy Doctors at least sound human, while here they sound like a historical pageant that we all hated sitting through in third-grade assembly. The acting is extremely hammy by all concerned, and the cavewomen's dialog leads us in a straight line to " Indeed, indeed, 'tis courting we need" in, I believe, Knutzy Knights, one of the worst of the worst Shemp remake/clip fests.
As I have posted before, I blame almost all of this on Jules White, a hammy director with unchallenged power ( in his little bailiwick ) encouraging hamminess and overacting in his actors, but whoever is responsible ( it's Jules, really it's Jules ) the suckiness starts here. We do, I admit, have a few all-time classics to come, great, A+ stuff ( ahem, Ed Byrnes, ahem ), which discussions I can't wait to be a part of, so you'll hear from me then. I've noted before that there seem to be in our number those who think a great stooge flick is one where they are in a claustrophobic space and end up beating each other into misshapen lumps, but I am not one of those fans. If you are one of those claustro/sadists, your golden age is about to bloom. Count me out of those.
