Review of My Little Chickadee (1940) by Jay M — 11 Jan 2007

"Young lady"? Mae West? Look it up--when this movie was made, she was over forty. He was sixty--and died a few years later. Then again, it's just as easy to believe as that she's a wild gunslinger who can shoot her way out of an Indian attack--or, come to think of it, that W. C. Fields's companion is an Indian.

Anyway, I'm done. Unless someone gives me a pretty compelling reason, I won't be bothering with any other W. C. Fields movies, either. After the Marx Brothers marathon, I still could have taken in one of the post-Zeppo ones. However, if I never see another Mae West movie again, that'll be just dandy.

Maybe it's the era. Maybe some humour translates better after sixty years than others does; I can't be sure. Heck, some jokes are still funny thousands of years later--see Aesop, for example. But I rather assume that for every work that stands the test of time, there must be a dozen or more that don't. Mae West, I suppose, is one that doesn't.

The other thing I noticed is that she really wasn't [i]that[/i] well-endowed, either. Oh, she made the most of what she had, and certainly she was better-endowed than most of the fashionable women of the time, but mostly, it's that she had a large frame. Breast size generally balances out to frame size, though I've certainly known exceptions in my day. Frankly, [i]I'm[/i] better-endowed, though I'm also quite a bit taller. (She was 5'1".).

Oh, well. Anyway, you can't really be a film buff without seeing movies by a fairly sizable list of people--whether you like the movies or not. You still have to be able to talk about them intelligently. I can now intelligently explain why I don't like Mae West movies.