Reducing (1952) User Reviews (4)

C'mon, Pete! Have a Heart!

[redryan64 · 5/10 · 4 April 2016]

HA! HA! LET'S make fun of the fat people! They're worthless and have feelings. Why are they so pump, ample, pudgy, chubby, fully-figured and even obese? Why can't they be perfect like us?

OKAY, NOW YOU know how we feel about this topic. The curse of one's being too heavy is a source of getting a cheap laugh at someone else's expense that has been around since time immemorial. It really isn't a very good example of high comedy and can only be considered to be cruel, vulgar and strictly low-brow.

WITH ALL OF that having been said, let's get on to.............

TODAY'S REVIEWED FILM is one of the many installments in the PETE SMITH SPECIALTIES, being perhaps the most prolific series in the history of the field of the short subject. Unlike most any other series (and there were so many), the PETE SMITH product ran the spectrum from very serious, the "how to", the historical as well as the comedy or pure farce.

THE FORMAT WAS pretty much the same for this edition as for the bulk of the others. It opens up with an voice over which sets up the premise. The on-screen actor, in this case Maxine Gates, would act out what the narrator is describing. As was also par for the course, the litany of the attempted acts usually all end up in an abrupt ending and an appropriate sound effect. There is no on-screen dialogue permitted.

ONCE AGAIN, WE didn't mean to be either harsh nor prejudicial toward this nor any other PETE SMITH short. It's just that what would work well for a Disney GOOFY Short may nay not translate to a live action film.

ONE THING THAT we must mention is the narration in this one. Maybe it's our (my) hearing that's failing me; but, it didn't sound like Pete Smith behind the microphone . Maybe some voice specialist "ghosted" this one.

LET'S ASK ME buddy, Schultz, what he thinks. Hey Schultz, do you think that someone over at the Studio would tell us?

WELL FOLKS, FRIEND Schultz replied, "Fat Chance!"

Tells only half the story

[temlakos-1 · 5/10 · 29 August 2017]

This short film tells only half the story--how *not* to reduce. It shows plainly that dieting alone never works. Unless you address the source of the cravings, you'll still crave. When you crave, you cheat. It's that simple.

But good ol' Pete didn't tell *how* to beat the cravings. Maybe his advisers didn't know enough. But the jokes wear a little thin after awhile.

His "Let's Talk Turkey" short was a lot better. Even before he told all the jokes about "how not to carve a turkey," he called in an expert to show us how it's done. Not so here.

Just so you know: the secret is to start lifting a few weights--not the really heavy ones, but just enough to start building a little muscle. While you're doing that, you want to knock off the sweets but not the meat and (healthy) fats. A few good choices, and after a week or so, those cravings would have vanished. Then this could have been inspiring.

But Pete had a problem. Like everyone else, he assumed that once you got fat, you'd stay fat. To paraphrase George Gershwin, it ain't necessarily so.

A Rather Harsh "Comedy"

[Michael_Elliott · 31 March 2009]

Reducing (1952)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A rather mean-spirited short from Pete Smith has an overweight woman (Maxine Gates) trying to reduce her waist size without much luck. Being a short from Smith will have you expecting a lot of jokes aimed at the overweight woman but I must admit that I was rather shocked at how mean-spirited the film was. There were countless times Smith, as the narrator, referred to her as "fatso" and I'm sure this was meant to be funny and perhaps it was in 1952 but it's not today. I've been skinny all my life but watching this short made me feel rather uneasy considering some of the terms used to talk about overweight people. Other jokes deal with the woman jumping rope only to have the entire building move. The film gets a few minor laughs but in the end it's just too mean to fully enjoy.

We Can Still Make Fun Of Fat People

[boblipton · 7/10 · 30 November 2020]

So says the fat guy writing ths review, and a good thing it is too. We need to preserve some of the old comedy tropes. However, given that this Pete Smith short is about an overweight woman, are we still permitted to snicker?

A Smih called Pete doesn't seem to care, nor does his foley artist -- who offers us loud thuds whenever the flesh meets the floor. I'm afraid that my sense of humor is still mred n bygone days, producing what my niece calls a low sense of humor. On those terms, this is a funny short. Well, goodbye now!