23 -- Skidoo (1930)
** (out of 4)
This is a pretty flat comedy from Warner about a restaurant owner (Lew Fields) who can't keep waiters and has to hear it from his all too evil wife. He finally has five new people show up but they've all got their own "troubles" as to why they won't make good waiters. Comedian Fields is one of many people who were famous on Vaudeville but never made the jump to motion pictures. If you check out his page on IMDb you'll see that there was a very large gap in his filmmography and while I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that on stage his "act" was quite funny, it sadly doesn't translate to film. I wouldn't put all of the blame on the comedian because he actually is quite charming in the picture and his low-key style works to a point. The problem is that the screenplay just doesn't offer him much to work with. We get the typical scenes of him being picked on by the wife and of course he has some silly lines to say to the new waiters who all have physical problems. Fans of early cinema might want to check this out or those who want to see vaudeville performers but everyone else can just skip it.
