You Said a Mouthful (1932)

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I'd seen Joe E. Brown in movies, but You Said a Mouthful was my first Joe E. Brown vehicle. I was essentially here for early-career Ginger Rogers, and she's not the best used as a comedy romantic interest putting on a high nasally voice. But then everyone is a caricature in this, it's just that brand of comedy. Brown is the office nerd and pushover who invents a new kind of swimsuit, gets an inheritance, but not really, mostly just an adopted son, and winds up being mistaken for a champion swimmer, forcing him to swim the channel between Catalina Island and the West Coast to win the heart of one Ms. Rogers. It's all connects, I guess, but for a while it feels like a latter-day Simpsons episode where we keep jumping from one situation to another. Once we're on the Island, things get better and the race itself has a lot of fun, old-fashioned gags, and some pleasant stunt work. Of course, everyone being a caricature extends to little Farina as the adopted son, which means his portrayal is borderline racist (he's a useful character in the story and more level-headed that Brown's, but we're deep in "magic negro" territory with this one). An artifact of its time, You Said a Mouthful is still a mildly amusing puff piece. 3 years 11 months ago