Someone Should Have Inspected the Pacing
Today's review: The Inspector General.
The Inspector General initially looked promising to me because it was an older comedy, which increased the odds of it containing material I actually found funny. Then I found out it was set during the Napoleonic Era, and things looked even more promising. Sadly, as so often happens, the movie didn’t deliver.
The majority of the movie takes place in Brodny, a small town under Napoleon’s rule. The officials there are all corrupt, and thus terrified by the news that the Emperor’s Inspector General is touring the various towns to make sure everything is in order. They have no idea who he is, and think it’s very likely that he’ll show up in disguise, the better to observe the town. Meanwhile, a group of snake oil salesmen is making the rounds nearby, but the leader, Yakov (Walter Slezak) grows frustrated with his assistant Georgi’s (Danny Kaye) honesty and boots him out. Yakov also happened to have a letter with Napoleon’s seal on it, which Georgi winds up with and uses to stuff his boot. He wanders into Brodny, looking for food, and ends up getting arrested…until the officials hear about the stranger in town and find the seal of Napoleon on his person. Obviously, mistaken identity jokes ensue, along with the officials scrambling to look above board, Yakov getting wind of this and hoping to profit from it, and a lot of bafflement from Georgi. It’s all exactly the sort of thing you’d expect, and that can be annoying or enjoyable depending on if you like the tropes on display. For myself, I was pretty underwhelmed, though not quite for the reasons I expected.
What really fell flat for me in this movie was that a lot of the gags and routines went on for far too long. I’ve seen enough of Danny Kaye to know that his shtick was making funny faces, noises, and voices, with a little bit of slapstick thrown in. In small doses, this can be very entertaining, but the routines he’s part of in this movie never seem to know when to stop. Some “highlights” include Georgi’s desperate desire for food (I was actually getting worried this was going to be a recurring gag that would turn into the “character keeps getting dumped on” trope that I hate), trying to avoid a city guard who might recognize him as a fraud by hiding in the barracks and getting roped into their training exercises, and a musical number called “The Gypsy Drinking Song” that has one neat-ish conceit but mostly just keeps repeating the same routine over and over again. Even one bit that started out with some great wordplay and fast-paced enunciation eventually stretched out to annoying levels. There’s good material hiding in there, but someone (either the writers or Kaye) needed to be told when to stop milking the joke.
Making this even worse is the fact that extending those jokes takes time away from other material that probably should have been fleshed out more. For one thing, Georgi falls in love with one of the serving girls (Barbara Bates) at the home where he’s staying, but they barely interacted prior to the big scene where he sings about his feelings for her (did I mention this was a musical?), and we just go along with it because we’re familiar with the tropes. For another, this particular mistaken identity setup is a prime opportunity for the “person pulling the con winds up making life better for the people he’s conning” trope, but we actually get very little of that. It’s hinted at here and there, but we don’t actually see it. This is a shame, because that sort of thing can be very heartwarming, and Kaye’s likeable enough that I think that could have been fun to see. It certainly couldn’t have been any worse than the bits we did get…
Unless you’re a huge fan of Danny Kaye and/or his brand of humor, I wouldn’t recommend this movie. As stated, the humor and charm quickly wear thin, and there aren’t even many pretty period piece outfits to compensate for it. Leave this one to its own devices and go inspect something more interesting.
The Inspector General initially looked promising to me because it was an older comedy, which increased the odds of it containing material I actually found funny. Then I found out it was set during the Napoleonic Era, and things looked even more promising. Sadly, as so often happens, the movie didn’t deliver.
The majority of the movie takes place in Brodny, a small town under Napoleon’s rule. The officials there are all corrupt, and thus terrified by the news that the Emperor’s Inspector General is touring the various towns to make sure everything is in order. They have no idea who he is, and think it’s very likely that he’ll show up in disguise, the better to observe the town. Meanwhile, a group of snake oil salesmen is making the rounds nearby, but the leader, Yakov (Walter Slezak) grows frustrated with his assistant Georgi’s (Danny Kaye) honesty and boots him out. Yakov also happened to have a letter with Napoleon’s seal on it, which Georgi winds up with and uses to stuff his boot. He wanders into Brodny, looking for food, and ends up getting arrested…until the officials hear about the stranger in town and find the seal of Napoleon on his person. Obviously, mistaken identity jokes ensue, along with the officials scrambling to look above board, Yakov getting wind of this and hoping to profit from it, and a lot of bafflement from Georgi. It’s all exactly the sort of thing you’d expect, and that can be annoying or enjoyable depending on if you like the tropes on display. For myself, I was pretty underwhelmed, though not quite for the reasons I expected.
What really fell flat for me in this movie was that a lot of the gags and routines went on for far too long. I’ve seen enough of Danny Kaye to know that his shtick was making funny faces, noises, and voices, with a little bit of slapstick thrown in. In small doses, this can be very entertaining, but the routines he’s part of in this movie never seem to know when to stop. Some “highlights” include Georgi’s desperate desire for food (I was actually getting worried this was going to be a recurring gag that would turn into the “character keeps getting dumped on” trope that I hate), trying to avoid a city guard who might recognize him as a fraud by hiding in the barracks and getting roped into their training exercises, and a musical number called “The Gypsy Drinking Song” that has one neat-ish conceit but mostly just keeps repeating the same routine over and over again. Even one bit that started out with some great wordplay and fast-paced enunciation eventually stretched out to annoying levels. There’s good material hiding in there, but someone (either the writers or Kaye) needed to be told when to stop milking the joke.
Making this even worse is the fact that extending those jokes takes time away from other material that probably should have been fleshed out more. For one thing, Georgi falls in love with one of the serving girls (Barbara Bates) at the home where he’s staying, but they barely interacted prior to the big scene where he sings about his feelings for her (did I mention this was a musical?), and we just go along with it because we’re familiar with the tropes. For another, this particular mistaken identity setup is a prime opportunity for the “person pulling the con winds up making life better for the people he’s conning” trope, but we actually get very little of that. It’s hinted at here and there, but we don’t actually see it. This is a shame, because that sort of thing can be very heartwarming, and Kaye’s likeable enough that I think that could have been fun to see. It certainly couldn’t have been any worse than the bits we did get…
Unless you’re a huge fan of Danny Kaye and/or his brand of humor, I wouldn’t recommend this movie. As stated, the humor and charm quickly wear thin, and there aren’t even many pretty period piece outfits to compensate for it. Leave this one to its own devices and go inspect something more interesting.