Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

I was surprised to learn this compilation was put together in 1964, by that time MGM should have been able to put together a more coherent and cohesive product. It's got plenty of comedy stars as the title implies, but it's put together rather randomly and with no expressed central idea. Beginning with the silent films of the 1920's, the picture wends it's way through the Thirties right up to a Red Skelton picture made in 1948 - "A Southern Yankee". Whereas the early film clips presented were short and to the point, the longer this went on it seemed like the segments got longer and longer for each picture selected as representative for their respective stars. This wasn't what I was expecting, and actually thought it would be more like another picture I just recently watched called "Hollywood My Home Town" (1965) which featured a lot more candid clips of celebrities of the era 1927 through the early Sixties. If you're a major movie fan you've probably caught many of the movies on display here, but at least in my case the picture provided the inspiration to record a film offered on Turner Classics that I'll get to in due course. I've seen Marie Dressler's name pop up more and more on my radar lately, so I'll be looking forward to her team up with Wallace Beery in 1930's "Min and Bill".

Youngson must have been the last real movie ghoul, making a living by cutting up old films into virtual guitar picks. Good bad or indifferent, the only reason for inclusion in this compilation seems to be he could get his hands on a print and then chop chop chop, funny or not. It reminds me of Glenn L. Martin delivering a plane to the Army in WW2 (the B-26 aka The Widowmaker) which kept killing its crews. Martin explained that it met the contractual specifications. This film meets somebody's contractual specifications and made what's called a 'nice show business dollar', but it is a pile of junk whose stink is even more loathsome considering the talent which gets ripped off. Normally I would just leave this alone except for the fact that this film contains the most perfunctory and execrable film lyric of all time. In the song, which is introducing a segment on Robert Benchely, the lyric goes- "Robert Benchley was a funny man/ A funny man was he". Certainly a new low in the lack of imagination department. Robert Youngson was a cheap-son-of-a-bitch/ a cheap-son-of-a-bitch was he. Of course Youngson didn't hire a lyricist but wrote the 'lyrics' himself, just like he wrote (oh, that narration would be rejected by Hallmark as soporific drivel, and it just goes on and inanely on), produced., directed, did the visual effects and titles, himself. His wife did the research. This was just one in a series of compilation films he did coming from the short film assembly lines which died in the early 50s. Insteed of going in to TV he did this. Now, I believe Youngson has been completely superseded by the age of film preservation and the like of Turner Classics and various DVD distributors though I guess he'll have his product in 99¢ bins for a long time to come. And not a moment too soon.

MGM's Big Parade of Comedy is just a random compilation of comedy clips with no point that don't do their stars any justice. They've all appeared in funnier films at other studios. They serve up probably the worst clip from the worst Marx Bros. film (Go West). Couldn't they have used A Night At The Opera instead (that was an MGM film)? They just dredge out any comedy star who just happened to appear in an MGM film - they even dish up a silent Joan Crawford film (now there's a comedienne). The only moments of levity for me were when they showed a compilation of Pete Smith comedy shorts (with Dave O'Brien). It also ends abruptly. I'm thankful someone had the good judgement to put it out of its' misery.

Many clips from the silent era through MGM's heyday. The editing could have been tighter--some sequences went on too long and others way too short--but I suspect the filmmakers wanted to make sure they didn't leave out any of the stars. Nevertheless, this is overall a funny stroll down memory lane.