Curvas y balas

My Little Chickadee is like a home movie W.C. Fields and Mae West just happened to make in their spare time, on the studio lot, back in 1940. The budget was not as ample as Miss West's er, well anyway, it's a pretty big picture but not that big. The dialogue is better than the film, which is frankly an amateurish mess. Both stars were past their prime when they made this western parody, and both seem a little tired, in general, and with one another, in their scenes together. They're much better when reciting the dialogue, which they worked on together (ah, to have been a fly on the wall during their script conferences). Maybe they spent all their energy on the writing. There certainly isn't much in their performing. For all its flaws, the movie has some hilarious moments, such as Fields' suggestion that he has "some definite pear-shaped ideas" he would like to discuss with Miss West.

Movie censorship was at its peak when this one was made. Fields and West had been two of the shining lights of early talkies, and the advent of the Production Code in the mid-thirties set them both back professionally, especially Miss West, who was the prime cause of it. Since they couldn't quite give this movie their all, due to the extreme censorship of the time, one has to continually read between the lines. There's a lot there, though not as much as I think they imagined there was. The film is an heroic effort none the less, if by today's standards rather quaint.