Well, this certainly has a lot of names…

Edward Everett Horton! Mah favourite!

Yeah, it’s the usual reaction to Cary Grant.

Grant only started acting a couple years earlier, but had already done a bewildering number of movies:

Can’t blame the producers.

This is so, so, so close to being a screwball comedy classic. The plot zings, the characters are perfect, they’re all hamming it up to eleven…

But it’s just slightly staid? Not the plot or anything, but the directing and the editing? There’s scenes here where I’m going NO! PUT THE CAMERA OVER THERE SO WE CAN SEE THE (PROBABLY) HILARIOUS REACTION SHOT! And CUT HALF A SECOND AND THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN PERFECT!

I’ve never seen a movie where it’s so clear what the technical problems are — it’s so frustrating.

It’s delightful, but it’s frustrating.

But, I mean, it is very funny.

Ladies Should Listen. Frank Tuttle. 1934. ⚄

This is the third Topper movie. The first two were quite tightly intertwined… but this one is basically just Topper on a new, random adventure with some new ghosts.

This is amusing, but it’s so random.

Topper Returns. Roy Del Ruth. 1941. ⚃

Oh, right, Cary Grant was in the first Topper movie? But he’s not in this sequel? How odd.

Oh yeah, this was the movie these two people died and then turned into ghosts and helped that other guy with his life!

It’s very high concept.

And I guess it was very successful since they did a sequel?

This is basically the same thing, only without Cary Grant — there’s now only a single ghost, but that ghost is still trying to help Topper (that guy to the right up there).

So it’s all these gags where he’s talking to an invisible woman, and people looking funny at him.

And Topper’s wife.

This is most amusing.

It’s really silly.

The ghost gags (here’s the ghost dog) are more accomplished than in the first movie, and it’s a lot less convoluted.

It’s just pure… silliness?

Some of these scenes are transcendently silly.

I think that was better than the first movie: It went right into the slapstick without all the emotional stuff first.

Oh, there’s a colour version on this DVD, too?

Has this been colourised?

Topper Takes a Trip. Norman Z. McLeod. 1938. ⚄