Review of A Chump at Oxford (1940) by Andrew F — 02 Aug 2017

Disappointing. It looks old-fashioned, especially as I had noticed the date of 1939 in the opening credits. It looked more old-fashioned than Will Hay in 1939. This was wartime (albeit not in the USA yet), and O&H were repeating their schtick from the early 1930s? Later I read that their partnership really only lasted from 1927-1940.

I think it lasted a few years longer than that, but once the war kicked in for real, it diffused and dissolved them. A chump at Oxford has a 20-minute pre-eamble, during which I wondered if the title was as random as a Marx brothers title (but then half of every Harold Lloyd movie is preamble), but no - they go to Oxford, BUT then they spend a whole 15 minutes stuck in a maze! One is tempted to wonder if that was symbolic.

There's a great scene in the maze where Stan wonders if he has three hands, but that's about all the content in the scene - in fact it's not a scene it's a whole act. It got a bit better after that, although there were no scenes of their studying, just a curious back-story about Stan being an English Lord (in reality - no kidding) but the film as a whole felt pretty old to me.