This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Today Lou would have been 100 so I decide to write a review of,"The Nauhgty Nineties".Back in the late 1970's and into the early '80s,every Universal produced Abbott & Costello film was shown on local TV. As a kid I found them to be just fall down funny! Being someone who reads and writes a lot,their constant word-play routines would make me laugh 'til I cried! I even found their "slap in the face" gag funny. (I laugh now but kind of cringe at the slightly unwarranted smacks Lou had to endure,fake or not.Anyhow,I bought this on VHS in 2004,brand new and hadn't seen it in a long,long time. Happy to say "Who's On First","The Cat-Buger Gag" and more still are as funny now as then. My favorite routine,even more than "Who's",is the scene where Bud Abbott is giving directions to a riverboat stage-hand about how to arrange background scenery. Lou comes on-stage wanting to rehearse his song,"My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean".While Lou tries to do his song acapella,Bud is still talking to the stage-hand but...Lou thinks the directions are for him! "Higher!" (Lou sings a little higher) "Higher"!! (Lou sings higher until he screeches! Then "Lower",then "a little to the right",to the left. "Lift the left leg (a stage left piece of back-drop)Lou lifts his left leg,then his right until he's jumping up & down and still trying to sing!! I wont give away the pay-off! The overall plot is good and standard for a comedy of the 1940's. The captain of the riverboat is deceptively taken over by crooked people. Bud and Lou wok on the ship. Bud is a "ham" actor (full of himself). Lou fixes things on the boat & other duties. It's up to them to get the boat back in the hands of the captain & his daughter somehow. I'll let you rent or buy the movie to see how it all plays out.Easily one of their top ten best,if not #1,comedies. This is the duo just before the pinnacle of their rise to success. Much as I don't exactly like straight comedy mixed w/musical comedy,I'll forgive it here because unlike in Marx Brothers films where it slows the pace of the laughs,it's not so here. Thank goodness. Happy 100th Lou,it's your birthday but you are the one who left us the best present.

It's not surprising that Abbott and Costello eventually got to do a movie on a showboat. Remember it was only 8 years earlier that Universal Studios did their classic version of Showboat and I'm sure that Carl Laemmle, Jr. wanted to take advantage of the set that was still there.The Naughty Nineties in fact take whole characters from the Showboat plot. Henry Travers's character of Captain Sam is a total ripoff of Captain Andy and Alan Curtis and Lois Collier make a passable nonsinging Gaylord Ravenal and Magnolia Hawkes. Collier sings, but there are no classic duets like in Showboat. And Curtis's character is a riverboat gambler like Ravenal.That being said the plot such as it is involves Rita Johnson and her two associates, Curtis and Joe Sawyer, gaining possession of Henry Travers's showboat with which they then set up some crooked gambling to make a quick profitable kill.Abbott and Costello are part of the Showboat crew. Abbott is an actor in the Victorian tradition and Costello is as usual a lovable all around klutz that Travers must be keeping around for laughs.If it's laughs Travers wants, he's made a sound investment because the boys do provide the public with plenty of that. The Naughty Nineties is famous as the film they did their classic Who's on First baseball routine. It had been done previously in their debut film, One Night in the Tropics, but in an abbreviated form.Actually there is one routine involving poor Lou as he thinks he's eating a cat, I mean the feline type cat.Joe Sawyer joins a list of otherwise serious actors like Douglass Dumbrille, Lionel Atwill, and Lon Chaney, Jr., who got in on the comedy with the boys. Sawyer does his own version of the famous Niagara Falls routine involving him sleepwalking and he looks like he's having a ball doing it. Sawyer makes a perfect foil for Bud and Lou's monkeyshines.And I think the audience will enjoy it as much as Joe Sawyer.

This is the film to see if you're fairly new to Abbott and Costello, or if you just want to see a whole bunch of their best routines strung together for merry fun and entertainment! It's an easy 76 minute ride on a cheerful riverboat as Bud plays a ham actor and Lou is his zany assistant. The boat's captain is none other than dear old Henry Travers, best known from IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. When the kind-hearted Captain Jack gets swindled by a trio of crooked card sharks, they gain three quarters' possession of his ship and try to turn it into a rigged gambling operation. It's then up to Abbott and Costello to help Jack get it back.It's nice to see A&C in a costume "period picture", and the setting on the traveling riverboat is perfect. Lois Collier makes a beautiful vixen, and Joe Sawyer (who starred with the comedy team in other films) makes the quintessential mean guy who keeps getting foiled by the boys. There are a few little songs, but this time they fit nicely into the air of the proceedings and are never overlong.But best of all, THE NAUGHTY NINETIES packs more funny routines into its short running time than you can count: Lou tangles with a real bear thinking it's only Bud in costume; Costello mimics Joe Sawyer as a mirror while Sawyer tries to shave; Lou becomes a punching bag during Sawyer's violent nightmare; Costello keeps throwing back every fish he catches to snag an even bigger fish; and on and on they go. But two of the very best gags of all are incorporated into this film -- the first is a classic bit of business where Costello misinterprets stage directions from Abbott, as he tries to sing "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean", and the grand highlight is the famous "Who's On First" routine - complete and perfectly rendered in this outing. It was reportedly done in two takes because the crew could not keep from laughing. Listen closely and you can hear them trying not to break up. ***1/2 out of ****

Another great Abbott and Costello movie, immortalized by the famous "Who's on first?" routine. The movie's excellent second half compensate for slow beginning. Lots of funny skits. Like the one with the 33 always coming back at the roulette table. At 76 minutes, this slap stick comedy is fun to watch.Out of 100, I give it 80. That's good for *** out of ****.