Personally, I’m not too familiar with El Brendel’s work outside of WINGS, which I thought he was alright in. From what I can gather, he was apparently most known for his word confusion resulting from his dialect, which might be funny in small doses as a supporting player, but really does not make him a good lead.
Yeah, the two do not make a good team and have no chemistry whatsoever, though I don’t want to blame El Brendel entirely for this. It feels like this could have been written for just about any other team at Columbia, considering that really neither one of them is the leader. El Brendel seems to be the leader of the duo at first, then it suddenly shifts to Shemp. JWF also makes a good point about the scenes with the judge; why have him there if there is no real payoff from him recognizing them? As much as we may like to blame El Brendel, I feel Felix Adler should get just as much blame for a shoddy writing job here, especially considering this plot line isn’t even original.
It’s a shame because I’ve always loved when Shemp plays a nearsighted character. I can’t really explain, but there’s just something so appealing whenever he does this, as though he perfectly timed out when he needed to crash into people or just simply make a witty comment. I really wish I could see his version of the Maharajah routine.
The best scenes are when Shemp is by himself, particularly when he’s putting the tools and the box and when he’s trying to cork the pipe. It’s just nice to see him making witty comments without interruption and I think these scenes should have been enough proof for Columbia that he could carry his own series.
It’s not horrible, but there really isn’t much of interest here beyond seeing Shemp play his nearsighted character.
4 out of 10
