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Mummy's Boys
USA 1936
produced by Lee S. Marcus, Samuel J. Briskin (executive) for RKO
directed by Fred Guiol
starring Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Barbara Pepper, Moroni Olsen, Frank M. Thomas, Willie Best, Francis McDonald, Frank Lackteen, Charles Coleman, Mitchell Lewis, Frederick Burton, Noble Johnson, Edward Keane, Rita Rozelle
story by Jack Townley, Lew Lipton, screenplay by Jack Townley, Philip G. Epstein, Charles E. Roberts, music by Roy Webb
Wheeler & Woolsey
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Professor Browning (Frank M. Thomas) has been part of an expedition to
Egypt that saw its participants dying like flies - sometimes right before
his very eyes. So he decides to return all the treasures he brought abroad
to the tomb he has taken them from. Somehow, Stanley (Bert Wheeler) and
Aloysius (Robert Woolsey) are hired as his chief excavators, even if they
haven't got the first idea about ... anything, really. That doesn't keep
Stanley to fall for Browning's daughter Mary (Barbara Pepper), and she
falls for him as well. In Egypt, after any number of random hijinks,
they reach the tomb but Professor Browning disappears. so Stanley,
Aloysius, their sidekick Catfish (Willie Best) and Mary all enter the tomb
- to at first find nothing for the longest time, then be trapped within
the tomb due to a cave-in, thento discover Browning having been made
captive by his associate Dr Sterling (Moroni Olsen), who apparently has
killed all the other members of the expedition because he has found a
secret room in the tomb only known to him that's full of treasures and
stuff, and now he has lured ... Browning back here to ... make him his
captive and ... ultimately cause others to go look for him and inevitably
find the tomb and ... yeah, I know it makes no sense. So anyways, Browning
manages to escape, and even nitwits like Stanley and Aloysius manage to
find the secret chamber, and even if Sterling tries to dress up like a
mummy to scare him off, justice prevails at the end and Stanley gets the
girl ... Most certainly not one of the better Wheeler
& Woolsey comedies: The script in its entirety makes little
sense and for the most part is just a hanger for unrelated Egypt-related
jokes and routines, several of which might be seen as politically
uncorrect or even racist from today's point of view (but always remember,
back in the days there was no thing like political correctness). What's
worse though is that neither Wheeler nor Woolsey's character seems to be
fully rounded out, in this they just seem to be comics who deliver their
lines with sometimes more sometimes less enthusiasm ... but at least some
of the jokes are funny. So in all, not a total trainwreck, and I'd go so
far and say I've seen better comic duos in worse movies, but certainly far
from a must-see let alone classic.
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