After Columbia Pictures mined Edward G. Robinson’s gangster character for laughs in THE WHOLE TOWN’S TALKING/’35, home studio Warner Bros. took over the act with A SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER/’38 (prohibition brewer must upgrade product); BROTHER ORCHID/’40 (convent hideout goes more than skin deep); and this adaptation of S. J. Perelman’s flop play A NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS* on how a crook’s plan to tunnel into a neighboring bank from a luggage shop is foiled by his unexpected success as a retailer. No doubt, the idea would have worked best as one of Perelman’s many New Yorker short stories. Instead, it becomes the runt of the litter in Eddie G.’s trio of gangster yuck-fests @ Warners. It does manage a few decent laughs, mostly around the edges from supporting players Broderick Crawford as a dense strongman and a very young Jackie Gleason’s soda jerk; while wasting Jack Carson & Jane Wyman in a nothing romance. It's not bad, but too much in here feels pretty obvious, with director Lloyd Bacon falling back on a rat-a-tat-tat delivery when gags fall flat. Bacon, who made all three of these, had the best luck with BROTHER ORCHID, the least promising of the trio. Go figure.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Woody Allen, who idolized Perelman, refashioned the basic idea to modest result in SMALL TIME CROOKS/’00. (Not that Perelman gets any credit on it.)
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