Between the Acts at the Opera (1926)
** (out of 4)
This early sound short highlights brothers Willie and Eugene Howard. The men were very popular on the vaudeville circuit and this film gives us a rare chance to see what their act would have been like. The film runs just over 11-minutes with the first seven going towards some fast-paced back and forth jokes. Most of the jokes don't work very well but there were a couple that really made me laugh including the "10x10=90" gag. The last portion of the show has the brothers doing a musical number and this here is where the short really lost me. It's not that the number was bad but it's just not very entertaining. Overall I think only film buffs should bother with this short as it's pretty clear there's little entertainment value outside its historic nature. For an early sound film I was floored by how terrific the sound was. I've seen sound movies in 1930 that had horrible sound but that's not the case here as the dialogue is razor sharp and there's only some minimum hiss, which is to be expected. You can tell that the brothers weren't use to "acting" in front of a camera as both of them seem rather tight at the start but they get better as the minutes go by.
