Review of Little Big Shot

A routine, if somewhat violent gangster melodrama, filmed on a moderate budget with worthy players struggling to bring some life into a routine array of the usual stock characters (which were still going strong when Abbott and Costello re-made the first scenes of the movie far more amusingly as Buck Privates in 1941). Admittedly, as said, some of the players try hard (too hard in the case of Edward Everett Horton, whose efforts serve to highlight the lack of inspiration in the writing of his lines and business), and Miss Jason is most definitely a worthy find. Unfortunately, despite her evident talents and her precocious maturity, there were several moppets ahead of her in the Hollywood pecking order, including box office giant, Shirley Temple. All told, by the high standards (script, budget, players) we'd come to expect of a Michael Curtiz movie at this stage (his previous film was Front Page Woman; his next, Captain Blood), Little Big Shot must be rated a big disappointment.