'Catch-As-Catch-Can' is a shaky start for the Todd/Pitts comedy series

Catch-As-Catch-Can (1931)
Starring: ZaSu Pitts, Thelma Todd, Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams, Al Cooke, Eddie Dillon, and Reed Howes
Director: Marshall Neilan
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When ZaSu (Pitts) and a professional wrestler (Williams) bond over their shared backgrounds as country folk, Thelma (Todd) and his manager (Howes) move to turn the bond into romance. When the ladies attend his big match to inspire him to fight, there's as much action in the audience as in the ring.

"Catch-As-Catch-Can" was the first true installment in the series of films that producer Hal Roach intended to use as a vehicle to create a female comedy team with the box-office might of Laurel & Hardy. While watching it, a thought kept popping into my head: There were better films later in the series, and Thelma Todd had enjoyed better vehicles in the Charley Chase films.

This isn't a bad film... but it's not exactly good either. It's nicely paced, all the actors do good jobs bringing to life a cast of pleasant and likable characters, but it's a little light on comedy. In fact, the first five-ten minutes of the film, which spends time setting up the two co-workers and roommates who are ostensibly the focus of the film, offer only a few mild chuckles... unless one thinks that a pair of home sick small-towners in the big city are funny just for being small-towners in the big city? The laughs don't even come from the main characters, but are instead generated by a drunk (Al Cooke) who first causes difficulties for Thelma and ZaSu at work, and then later at the wrestling match.

The fact the drunk is the source of comedy is sort of an early warning for what occurs in the second half of the movie, when the action movies to the sports arena. Technically, it's all extremely well-staged and filmed, and, as mentioned above, the actors are all great, but there are so many bit- and secondary players doing comedy routines that it feels like the main characters are almost being crowded out of their own picture. This sense is strengthened by the fact that those secondary players are also the ones who deliver most of the laughs.

Maybe my problem with the film is that the main characters get to mostly remain genteel and emerge from the evening's activities with their dignity mostly intact (even if poor ZaSu will need a hat)? This is not something I'm used to in these Hal Roach short films, especially when it comes to Thelma Todd. Todd usually manages to keep projecting poise and dignity even while her character is being subjected to, or taking part in, the most ridiculous slapstick situations. Even in the films where Todd is the "straight-woman", she usually gets to show off that remarkable ability to some degree.

"Catch-As-Catch Can" is a pleasant enough film, although it's an inauspicious beginning for Pitts' and Todd's run together. Since I intend to watch and review all of the films they were teamed for, I hope that this one is the exception rather than the rule. (I know that they made better films together than this one, since I've watched and reviewed a few of them already; this is the weakest of their 17 films together that I've seem so far.)