Caught Plastered (1931)

It's prohibition-era and W + W are helping old lady Lucy Beaumont (mother) to run her dug-store so she can turn a profit, pay her rent and avoid going into an old people's home. W + W don't know anything about running a drugstore but they make a success of things and introduce a food and drink counter which takes off. Jason Robards (Harry) is the bad guy who wants the shop to fail and he colludes with a colleague to provide W + W with lemon syrup to serve to customers. The lemon syrup is, in fact, alcohol. This is not good news in times of prohibition and W + W are now operating a 'Speakeasy' which gets busted after a tip-off to Police Chief De Witt Jenkins from the bad man Robards.

Sometimes the film is a bit funny but mostly it's not. You watch in anticipation of something funny that might happen, but it mostly doesn't happen, I'm afraid to say. The film gets pulled up into the "ok" category by the song performed by Wheeler and Dorothy Lee (Peggy). I wish there had been a proper dance number between them. W + W also perform a few brief dance steps together and it's these musical interludes that make the film an ok experience. They really needed more dance numbers in this film - Dorothy was wasted coz she can dance.

As for prohibition - it's a tough call to outright ban something. I think the obvious choices would include violence and killing but how about including those people who encourage singers to do that vocal gymnastics nonsense and make male singers intonate like babies when they vocalize!!! Yep, get those time-wasters off the planet ....................and pass round the lemon syrup....alcoholic, of course.