Review of The Nitwits

Some of those old Wheeler and Woolsey comedies can seem too low-budget, or too odd, or too antiquated, to modern eyes. "The Nitwits" is probably one of their easiest films to watch for newcomers. It tries to do many different things, and it succeeds, more or less, in all of them: the music is tuneful, the comedy is amusing (if rarely hilarious), the slapstick at the end is furious, the mystery is mysterious, and the atmosphere is atmospheric. It's also interesting to observe the differences between "The Nitwits" and "So This Is Africa", which Wheeler and Woolsey had made only two years earlier: that one had practically no story and was loaded with provocative, visual and verbal, material; this one has a solid, coherent plot and it's so chaste that the young lovers (Wheeler and a fresh-faced, appealing Betty Grable) are barely even allowed to kiss! *** out of 4.