Fred Allen was primarily a radio comedian who had reached the height of his popularity around when this film was made in 1945. Today in the circles of those who appreciate old time radio he's still not as widely-heard as his longtime pseudo-rival Jack Benny, but those who know him tend to regard him highly for his sardonic and satirical wit, directed in mockery of almost everything. "It's in the Bag!" was his only starring film, and one can believe there was a good amount of confidence in it, as star cameo appearances abound.
Allen plays a flea circus ringmaster who learns he has been left a fortune in this fairly standard farce-caper plot, and the result is a film that is intermittently quite funny but doesn't ever really seem to know whether it is a film version of radio's successful Fred Allen Show, or a standard-issue comedy film that happens to have Fred Allen for a lead actor. It opens rather delightfully and refreshingly with Allen addressing the audience and making a series of jokes amusingly mocking the practice of prefacing a film with a few minutes of credits. Throughout, characters will occasionally break the fourth wall and turn to the screen with a sardonic comment on the action.
However, "It's in the Bag!" doesn't go the whole hog as far as being a witty satire on the tropes and conventions of the comedy film. If it had it would have played right to Allen's strength and probably been much more memorable. As it is, it goes through its fairly generic plot -- in which Allen must find one of a number of chairs, now sold, which contains a trove of money, with about the usual proportion of gags that work to those that don't.
Mixed in there is a Fred Allen character who is somewhere between his radio self and a straight representation of his character in the storyline (though he never loses his distinctive demeanor and delivery). Sometimes he chimes in with his personal style of removed, observant wit, and sometimes that element is gone. We take a virtual sideline from the plot for a few minutes as Fred engages in a typically batty (and funny) exchange with the staple radio character of Mrs Nussbaum, now with pictures added.
It's Allen's picture, of course, but perhaps the highlight is the substantial and wonderful scene where Jack Benny appears, complete with a brief voice cameo from Mary Livingston and plenty of well-executed iterations of the running gag about his impossible cheapness (I loved the hat-check girl in his closet). Benny and Allen have the same chemistry as they do in their immortal radio rivalry, but while Benny is his radio character, the pretense is kept up that Allen's character doesn't actually know him.
Allen's actual performance is comically good and less static than one might expect having seen his appearances in television and other films -- he even does some gymnastics in the jail at one point. His genius son is a pretty funny running gag, and William Bendix gives a very funny performance as a milquetoast, vitamin-guzzling gangster.
There are some other great cameos here too from the world of radio, and a number of very funny and unusual sequences (such as a very questionable psychiatrist convinced he's being attacked by tsitsi flies and obsessed with eating Fred's food), but there's also a sense that if it had fully committed to reflecting Fred Allen;s style of humor all the way through and satirizing film themselves, or to bring the world of his radio series to the screen instead of marrying these with some otherwise typical material.
Allen plays a flea circus ringmaster who learns he has been left a fortune in this fairly standard farce-caper plot, and the result is a film that is intermittently quite funny but doesn't ever really seem to know whether it is a film version of radio's successful Fred Allen Show, or a standard-issue comedy film that happens to have Fred Allen for a lead actor. It opens rather delightfully and refreshingly with Allen addressing the audience and making a series of jokes amusingly mocking the practice of prefacing a film with a few minutes of credits. Throughout, characters will occasionally break the fourth wall and turn to the screen with a sardonic comment on the action.
However, "It's in the Bag!" doesn't go the whole hog as far as being a witty satire on the tropes and conventions of the comedy film. If it had it would have played right to Allen's strength and probably been much more memorable. As it is, it goes through its fairly generic plot -- in which Allen must find one of a number of chairs, now sold, which contains a trove of money, with about the usual proportion of gags that work to those that don't.
Mixed in there is a Fred Allen character who is somewhere between his radio self and a straight representation of his character in the storyline (though he never loses his distinctive demeanor and delivery). Sometimes he chimes in with his personal style of removed, observant wit, and sometimes that element is gone. We take a virtual sideline from the plot for a few minutes as Fred engages in a typically batty (and funny) exchange with the staple radio character of Mrs Nussbaum, now with pictures added.
It's Allen's picture, of course, but perhaps the highlight is the substantial and wonderful scene where Jack Benny appears, complete with a brief voice cameo from Mary Livingston and plenty of well-executed iterations of the running gag about his impossible cheapness (I loved the hat-check girl in his closet). Benny and Allen have the same chemistry as they do in their immortal radio rivalry, but while Benny is his radio character, the pretense is kept up that Allen's character doesn't actually know him.
Allen's actual performance is comically good and less static than one might expect having seen his appearances in television and other films -- he even does some gymnastics in the jail at one point. His genius son is a pretty funny running gag, and William Bendix gives a very funny performance as a milquetoast, vitamin-guzzling gangster.
There are some other great cameos here too from the world of radio, and a number of very funny and unusual sequences (such as a very questionable psychiatrist convinced he's being attacked by tsitsi flies and obsessed with eating Fred's food), but there's also a sense that if it had fully committed to reflecting Fred Allen;s style of humor all the way through and satirizing film themselves, or to bring the world of his radio series to the screen instead of marrying these with some otherwise typical material.