The Devil's Brother AKA Bogus Bandits

The Devil's Brother AKA Bogus Bandits

MGM

May 5, 1933

Historical Comedy, Musical

DVD

D+

Not even Thelma Todd can save this for me.  Hal Roach and Charley Rogers co-directed.

Palooka

Palooka
United Artists
January 26, 1934
Sports Comedy
DVD
D+

Ham Fisher adapted his own comic strip, with the always middle-aged-looking 30-year-old Erwin as the young boxer.  Note the totally gratuitous postcard of topless "native women."  Benjamin Stoloff directed.

Speak Easily

Speak Easily
MGM
August 13, 1932
Comedy
DVD
C+

While this is never as funny as it promises to be, it's an amiable enough movie, both as pre-Code saucy as Thelma Todd (cast to type as someone with "sex appeal") and as bumblingly innocent as Buster Keaton playing an unworldly professor.  Jimmy Durante tells a lot of deliberately bad jokes, and the film meanders, but it's a pleasant 80 minutes or so.  (And a time capsule of course, with "drag" used in the "Varsity Drag" sense.)  Edward Sedgwick directed.