Pretty Good

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Although this film was made very late in their film careers, this Abbott and Costello film is amazingly enjoyable--proving that even as late as 1955, the team was still capable of making good movies. In fact, 1955 was a very good year, with the equally enjoyable ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY also coming to the screen.The film gets very high marks for being focused on the comedy team and not filling the movie with padding such as song and dance numbers (this is so in at least half their films). There also, thankfully, is no parallel romantic plot--another part of the formula that didn't help their earlier films.ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEETS THE KEYSTONE KOPS begins with the boys buying a movie studio from a shady character (Fred Clark). However, when they go to take possession of the place, they find that the crook had sold this to many people--and it wasn't his to sell in the first place. So, for the first third or more of the film, Bud and Lou are trying to cross the United States to go to Hollywood, as the trail of this crook has led there.Once in L.A., the fall into a movie shoot and don't realize it. However, their amazing driving of a runaway wagon wasn't lost on the film's producer--he loved the boys and wanted them to work in upcoming films. The director, in contrast, wasn't thrilled as this was Clark in disguise as a "great European director" and so far, no one had caught on that he had been a con man. And, to keep this a secret, Clark hired Slapsie Maxie Rosenblum to "arrange an accident" and get rid of Abbott and Costello once and for all. There's more to it than that as well as a crazy tribute to the Keystone Kops in the finale, but you'll just need to see the film to find out what happens.Overall, it's a funny film and a decent homage to silent comedy. Not their best but probably among their better films, this should make most Abbott and Costello fans quite happy.

Good movies about the early days of movies are scarce, which is strange and disappointing considering what a wealth of good material exists about that era. Peter Bogdanovich's NICKLEODEON started off pretty well but descended into trite soap opera before it finished. One of the best movies about silent movies is this one, maybe because it has a real feel for the time and the characters and presents them with a certain degree of authenticity. All that aside it's also a lot of fun. Bud and Lou are on form, the supporting cast (especially the great Fred Clark) is good, and the stunts are funny and well executed with nary a CG shot in sight. One of the best things about it is the lively musical score, in part by an uncredited Henry Mancini who recycled some of it for the chase scenes in Blake Edwards THE GREAT RACE. Recommended for slapstick fans.

A&C Meet the Kops is a funny movie, then and now. Bud and Lou were funny men, and their best film work was done at U-I in the postwar years, starting with their Meet Frankenstein classic. All their U-I Meet Somebody movies were funny, some were very funny. This one's a hoot all the way. I saw it with Power and Hayward in UNTAMED, Fox Redwood, April 15, 1955. Can't get better value for money than that. I was 16, am now 63. Maybe you have to be really old to get it, but youngsters, these guys are better than Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy and Ben Stiller all put together. No, really, they are.

"Abbott and Costello meet the Keystone Kops" gives a nice homage to the silent film era, in most ways. In that and every other respect, this film is flawed only by the long and eventually tedious chase scene involving the fake Keystone Kops. I admit it is enjoyable to watch people run in fast motion (typical of silent films), but that scene gets boring before long. I am a big Abbott and Costello fan. Here, the acting is good. Fred Clark is good as Joseph Gorman, and the man who plays the producer (I don't remember his name) was billed last, and he is one of the best actors in the cast, better than Fred Clark, even! Also, Roscoe Ates (the hillbilly who stutters) was perfect! The mistaken identity scene of the two policemen and crooks is hilarious. This film also has many other hilarious touches: Costello being thrown out of the theater (twice), the train scenes, the stop-motion when Joseph Gorman (disguised as Sergei), yells Cut!, Abbott and Costello being carried by each other at various times, and many more. This is not the best A&C film (only one film is reserved for that honor), but this is not a badfilm. It doesn't need to be better, really. It all depends on your expectations (and that should never be very high anyway).