'Hook, Line and Sinker' is the very generic title of this very generic comedy, starring Wheeler & Woolsey, who are very nearly the most generic comedy team of all time. (That dubious honour goes to the Ritz Brothers.) I consistently enjoy watching Wheeler & Woolsey, yet I frankly find them neither very good nor very original. Whenever Robert Woolsey pitches woo to some rich dowager (as he does here, to Jobyna Howland), it's impossible to avoid thinking of Groucho Marx flirting with Margaret Dumont ... and Woolsey suffers by comparison to the great Groucho. Wheeler & Woolsey are very similar to the much later British comedy team Morecambe & Wise ... but I doubt that Eric and Ernie deliberately imitated Bob and Bert. Wheeler & Woolsey also remind me of their contemporaries Clark & McCullough, with Robert Woolsey sometimes seeming to do an outright imitation of Bobby Clark.
In 'Hook, Line and Sinker', Wheeler & Woolsey make their entrance riding a two-seat tandem bike; this immediately reminded me of the British comedians the Goodies, who rode a three-seat tridem (which is funnier). More importantly, the Goodies got a large number of gags from their trademark tridem, whereas Wheeler & Woolsey abandon the tandem after its initial appearance. This seems to be the biggest problem with Wheeler & Woolsey: their inability to milk and develop a gag. In one of their films, W&W did a routine very similar to Abbott & Costello's 'Who's on First' (BEFORE Bud and Lou did it), yet they failed to develop this premise as richly as Bud and Lou would use it later. In fairness to Wheeler & Woolsey, part of their problem was their gag writers: most of the scripters who wrote material for W&W were concurrently also writing gags for the Marx Brothers, and the Marxes got first pick of all the best material ... lumbering W&W with literally the leavings. At one point in 'Hook, Line and Sinker', the soundtrack plays Kalmar and Ruby's hit song 'Three Little Words', reminding me that Kalmar and Ruby (who worked closely with the Marx Brothers) wrote the best gags for 'Hips, Hips, Hooray!', which is almost certainly Wheeler and Woolsey's funniest film: it features two delightful songs as well as some ingenious sight gags.
'Hook, Line and Stinker' ... sorry, 'Sinker' ... seems to borrow half its plot from the Marx Brothers' previous film 'The Cocoanuts' and its other half from the Marx Brothers' 'Monkey Business', which actually hadn't been written yet when this movie was made. Bert and Bob are briefly insurance salesmen who chuck it to help Dorothy Lee run her hotel. As luck would have it, the hotel is also the secret hideout of some bootleggers, who check into the hotel with some luggage from the Acme Machine Gun Company (a name you can trust).
Dorothy Lee was Bert Wheeler's perennial love interest in these movies. Here, she's more annoying than usual, speaking her dialogue in a high-pitched squeal that (unfortunately) matches the annoying voice that Wheeler normally uses for his own gormless character. Their dialogue scenes in this movie sound like chalk on a slate. Bert and Dorothy do have one very amusing scene in which they flirt by pressing keys on a cash register; unfortunately, the photography is too dim for us to see that Dorothy is pressing the "NO SALE" key. (Or is this just down to a badly-processed nitrate print?) Throughout this film, the photography features undercranking at oddly-chosen moments.
Amazingly, the funniest performance in this film (as a precognitive bellhop) is given by George Marion Snr, whom I usually find unbearable. I was also impressed by Hugh Herbert, who made this film before he developed the annoying "woo-woo" finger-patting routine that would ruin his performances in so many later films. Natalie Moorhead is amusing as an ersatz duchess whose Continental accent keeps coming and going, while William B Davidson plays a counterfeit duke who doesn't even bother attempting a phony accent.
A few decades after this film was made, Jerry Lewis recycled the title 'Hook, Line & Sinker' (he preferred an ampersand) for one of HIS worst comedies, which at least had the tiny merit of (very) vaguely having something to do with fishing. In this Wheeler & Woolsey film, the title's utterly irrelevant. (Yes, I know that it's an American figure of speech roughly equivalent to 'the full monty'.)
'Hook, Line and Sinker' is one of the weakest Wheeler & Woolsey films, and not a good introduction to Bert & Bob for audiences who have never seen this team before. Your introduction to W&W should be 'Hips, Hips Hooray!' or 'So This Is Africa', or even 'Rio Rita' or 'Dixiana'. I'll rate 'Hook' just 4 points out of 10.
