My Little Chickadee (1940)

W.C. Fields and Mae West team up in this tale from the Old West involving masked bandits, shoot-‘em-up train heists and crooked sheriffs.

This seemed like it was going to be a surefire entertainer from yesteryear because of the personality of the two stars involved. I expected plenty of laughs and lots of racy gags. Maybe some antiquated humor I couldn’t quite grasp. Outdated sexual innuendo. The usual.

Unfortunately this movie was so boring I had to turn it off midway through. This is something I almost never do. I hate giving up on something halfway—I’ll watch a stinker all the way through to the end just to have a complete picture of what I’ll later complain about to my friends.

But the issue with My Little Chickadee wasn’t that it was bad in the sense of being tasteless, humorless, or illogical. There were some jokes worth a chuckle or two. The problem was that the story was just outright boring. Apparently relying on the charisma of the two stars to carry the thing forward, no one bothered to put much stock in plot. Unfortunately both West and Fields fell totally flat in this one, and so without any kind of interesting action to fall back on, the whole thing just completely fell apart.

Wah-wah-wahwahwahwahhhh! (Disappointed trumpet.)

Up Next, Either:
New York, I Love You
Or
Where the Wild Things Are