Director: Norman Z. McLeod
If Here Comes Cookie is not the best picture to showcase the talents of George Burns and Gracie Allen, it is undeniably a personal one. For starters is the title, referencing Allen’s frequent singing of the medley in their earlier pictures together. But the last half of the film, which sees Allen convert a mansion into a shelter for struggling vaudeville acts, is an affectionate homage to their roots, showing a delightful pleasure in many of the skilled extras that appear in the film–in one scene, an unnamed juggler/drummer gets several minutes of screen time to show off his routine. That it all ends in the big show (as so many of these sorts of musicals do) is somewhat of a disappointment, perhaps a little too old hat for the usually expectation-defying duo. There is an amusing gag where a Romeo & Juliet adaptation is saved by unforeseen bloopers that plague the production, but the film has already run out of gas by the time it gets there. Interestingly, Burns and Allen don’t get as much screen time together as usual, which could explain what’s missing–even if their schtick was familiar, their genuine affection for each other translated well on screen. When they are kept apart and Allen, in particular, has her lunacy dialed up beyond where it usually is, they go from being something special to a fairly standard comedy routine.
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