Keep ‘Em Flying (1941)
The last Abbott and Costello service comedy we’ll be seeing for a while, Keep ‘Em Flying deals with the U.S. Army Air Corps this time around. Buck Privates is a passable effort that’s funny but suffers from a very tedious love story, while In the Navy is a mostly solid effort that occasionally dragged a bit with its song sequences. Keep ‘Em Flying sort of falls in the middle.
Dick Foran is Jinx Roberts, an egotistical stunt pilot who enlists in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a pilot along with his friends Blackie (Abbott) and Heathcliff (Costello), who join as ground crewmen. Roberts falls in love with USO hostess Linda Joyce (Carol Bruce) and befriends her brother Jim (Charles Lang). He tries to help Jim learn how to fly solo, but runs into a major obstacle: his commanding officer (William Gargan) is a former colleague who he is no longer on good terms with due to an incident years earlier.
As some of you may know, I was not too fond of Foran in Private Buckaroo and here he plays a somewhat similar character. He is more tolerable here in that he seems to get less and less egotistical as the film goes along and, unlike Lee Bowman in Buck Privates, when he does something stupid towards the end, it’s for someone else’s benefit rather than his own, even if he doesn’t quite realize how dangerous it is. Neither he nor Carol Bruce’s character is particularly interesting, but they definitely are more tolerable than the love interests in Buck Privates and, also unlike Buck Privates, Abbott and Costello are actually friends with Foran’s character from the start, so they do feel somewhat important to the story.
The songs are pretty boring this time around. The only song of interest throughout the film is a song performed by Martha Raye that is decent, but basically a rip-off of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” The rest are really tedious and as expected, they make the film drag in spots.
Abbott and Costello, though, are in very fine form throughout this film. At one point, they rework a routine that had previously been done by Laurel and Hardy in Should Married Men Go Home? and Men O’ War in which they only have enough for one meal and Costello keeps ruining it by getting a second order. I feel this actually works better with Abbott and Costello because Abbott’s prodding of Costello to get a meal seems more befitting of his character, plus this also features a great mix-up with Martha Raye portraying twin army hostesses. There’s also a mechanical gag involving a baseball bat that Abbott controls with a button. It seems like the kind of thing Buster Keaton would have been more interested in, but Abbott and Costello pull it off very well with their timing.
Another highlight is Costello trying to fake a phone conversation with the commanding officer. They get into a very heated exchange over the phone, yet when they meet with each other shortly afterwards, they fail to recognize each other and are actually very pleasant to one another. It plays out very well and if you can’t sit through the entire film, you should at least check this out, because it really is one of Costello’s best moments.
Hold That Ghost’s influence also seems to have stuck, as there is a whole scene dedicated to scare reactions from Costello, involving him going through a haunted house and then coming across a gorilla. It doesn’t last too long, but it’s always a delight to see the kinds of scare reactions that Lou did best even if it’s just for a short while.
As mentioned, Martha Raye portrays twins in this, with one being a love interest for Abbott and the other being a love interest for Costello. Though not quite as entertaining as Joan Davis in Hold That Ghost, Raye still manages to pull off two good performances, especially considering how central her characters are to some of the routines in the film.
Overall, Keep ‘Em Flying has some weak points, but still manages to hold itself together pretty well and also benefits from still having Abbott and Costello in their prime. For the most part, it should be able to hold your attention if you’re an Abbott and Costello fan.
8 out of 10
Dick Foran is Jinx Roberts, an egotistical stunt pilot who enlists in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a pilot along with his friends Blackie (Abbott) and Heathcliff (Costello), who join as ground crewmen. Roberts falls in love with USO hostess Linda Joyce (Carol Bruce) and befriends her brother Jim (Charles Lang). He tries to help Jim learn how to fly solo, but runs into a major obstacle: his commanding officer (William Gargan) is a former colleague who he is no longer on good terms with due to an incident years earlier.
As some of you may know, I was not too fond of Foran in Private Buckaroo and here he plays a somewhat similar character. He is more tolerable here in that he seems to get less and less egotistical as the film goes along and, unlike Lee Bowman in Buck Privates, when he does something stupid towards the end, it’s for someone else’s benefit rather than his own, even if he doesn’t quite realize how dangerous it is. Neither he nor Carol Bruce’s character is particularly interesting, but they definitely are more tolerable than the love interests in Buck Privates and, also unlike Buck Privates, Abbott and Costello are actually friends with Foran’s character from the start, so they do feel somewhat important to the story.
The songs are pretty boring this time around. The only song of interest throughout the film is a song performed by Martha Raye that is decent, but basically a rip-off of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” The rest are really tedious and as expected, they make the film drag in spots.
Abbott and Costello, though, are in very fine form throughout this film. At one point, they rework a routine that had previously been done by Laurel and Hardy in Should Married Men Go Home? and Men O’ War in which they only have enough for one meal and Costello keeps ruining it by getting a second order. I feel this actually works better with Abbott and Costello because Abbott’s prodding of Costello to get a meal seems more befitting of his character, plus this also features a great mix-up with Martha Raye portraying twin army hostesses. There’s also a mechanical gag involving a baseball bat that Abbott controls with a button. It seems like the kind of thing Buster Keaton would have been more interested in, but Abbott and Costello pull it off very well with their timing.
Another highlight is Costello trying to fake a phone conversation with the commanding officer. They get into a very heated exchange over the phone, yet when they meet with each other shortly afterwards, they fail to recognize each other and are actually very pleasant to one another. It plays out very well and if you can’t sit through the entire film, you should at least check this out, because it really is one of Costello’s best moments.
Hold That Ghost’s influence also seems to have stuck, as there is a whole scene dedicated to scare reactions from Costello, involving him going through a haunted house and then coming across a gorilla. It doesn’t last too long, but it’s always a delight to see the kinds of scare reactions that Lou did best even if it’s just for a short while.
As mentioned, Martha Raye portrays twins in this, with one being a love interest for Abbott and the other being a love interest for Costello. Though not quite as entertaining as Joan Davis in Hold That Ghost, Raye still manages to pull off two good performances, especially considering how central her characters are to some of the routines in the film.
Overall, Keep ‘Em Flying has some weak points, but still manages to hold itself together pretty well and also benefits from still having Abbott and Costello in their prime. For the most part, it should be able to hold your attention if you’re an Abbott and Costello fan.
8 out of 10
Comments
Post a Comment