My wife and I tried to watch this thing last night and we didn't get any further than 40 minutes into it. This thing was painfully unfunny. I have been listening to mp3s of the old Jack Benny radio program during my daily commute for the past few months and the man was brilliant on the radio. That show is classic and the man was great on it. So, that's why I rented Charly's Aunt--to see some of that brilliance on the screen. Well, I think Benny was trying, but there was just nothing working right in this slow, stagy, talky, stiff, loud attempt at farce. The distractingly bad English accents from the mainly American cast aside, there simply wasn't a single laugh in the 40 minutes I was able to get through. And I usually LOVE the old classic B&W comedies. I could see where they were trying to go with a few of the jokes, but the timing of the performances were so off that even those weak attempts were crushed. And the director never seemed to know when to stop a scene or where to put the camera either. The movie was so lamely incoherent that I spent most of my time trying to figure out what the people who made it even thought was supposed to be funny. Rent one of the classic farces like Arsenic and Old Lace, or one of Howard Hawk's screwball comedies, or even one of the Old Bob Hope comedies from the 40s and you'll see how it's supposed to be done. The people who gave this more than one star saw a different film than I did!
Review of Charley's Aunt
