I remember summer holidays from school, spending mornings watching films by these two comics as they used to show a lot of their re-runs in those days. (When ah were a lad!) They made a lot of spoof horror films as I recall, such as ‘Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein…’ or the Mummy… They were pretty funny as well, or so I thought. About five years ago I saw a bit of one of these spoof films and found that Lou Costello still made me laugh a bit even then, so when I saw this film for an extremely cheap price I had to get it.
I have been checking out old films a bit of late – I recently watched a Laurel and Hardy film, but that was pants. Would Bud and Lou restore my faith in comedy of the 1950’s? Would I be happy to climb the tallest building in the area and shout down to the people, ‘Hey, you, fear not! For this comedy duo can still hit the mark?’ Would I even write a good review?
Well…
Hmmm…
No.
Not really…
Brief history lesson: William Alexander “Bud” Abbott (born 1895, died 1974) and Lou Costello (born 1906, died 1959) formally teamed up in 1936 and went on to make films such as ‘Buck Privates’ and the aforementioned ‘Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.’ They made over 30 films together, but as the years went on their relationship became a bit ‘frosty.’
‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ was made in 1952 and also starred Dorothy Ford and James Alexander. It is not a long film – around 78 minutes. It has a typical fairytale film beginning, showing an old book opening to reveal the cast and crew – just how many times has that been done before and since this, I wonder? Jack (Costello) gets a job babysitting a young prodigy-cum-brat, and Abbott plays his manager. The prodigy-cum-brat is basically a… well… brat.
In an attempt to settle the boy down, Jack reads the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. We leave their black and white world and, very ‘Wizard of Oz’ like, we appear in a colourful world where Jack lives with his mother.
The story is pretty much the fairy tale story that everyone knows:
Cow exchanged for magic beans, Jack told off for being stupid, beans growing into a beanstalk, a giant, fee fi fo fum, you get the gist?
However, when Jack starts to climb the beanstalk, along with Abbott – who plays a butcher (Jack swapped his cow for the beans with the butcher – was basically conned, but the giant takes the cow and Abbott wants it back; plus the giant has a goose that lays golden eggs… added incentive for Abbott), the village below bursts into song. This surprised me somewhat as I did not expect that. A bit of ‘filling in,’ I suspected at the time.
But the singing goes on through out the rest of the film – I guess people did that in those days, sung more. Perhaps we should all sing more than we do.
The actual giant – when we see him – is a huge let down. Oh, what Peter Jackson could do with such a remake! The giant is just a very tall man who looks a bit like a Klingon from the first Star Trek series. The giant inevitably catches them both and they are imprisoned, along with a princess and a prince. There is more singing. Costello shows the world that he cannot sing at all. They plot their escape…
Anyway, I won’t go into more detail of the story, you might have a strange do and actually want to watch this rubbish one day!
Directed by Jean Yarbrough, this is not a good film. I think the acting is well done, but this has dated badly. I can just imagine my children sitting to watch this and so getting bored quickly. I know lots of people like this duo – as they do Laurel and Hardy, but on this showing I can’t understand why. I may check out one of the spoof horror stories they did…
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Production Year: 1991 - Drama - Director: Joel Schumacher - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Julia Roberts, Campbell Scott, Vincent D'Onofrio, David Selby, Colleen Dewhurst
Production Year: 2003 - Drama - Director: Michael Winterbottom - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton, Om Puri, Jeanne Balibar
Production Year: 2004 - Drama - Director: Nick Cassavetes - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over, 12 years and over - Starring: Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands
Jul 4th, 2007
very helpful by (92%):
helpful by (8%):
