Two Knights from Brooklyn (1949)

Two Knights from Brooklyn (1949)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Strange film from Hal Roach takes two other movies and edits them into this one. Joe Sawyer and William Bendix plays cab owners and at the start of the film they're getting an award when we see two flashbacks to their earlier days. The first, from the film Taxi, Mister has Bendix meeting and courting his future wife (Grace Bradley) while a gangster is also after her. The second flashback, from The McGuerins from Brooklyn, has the wife thinking that Bendix is cheating on her so Sawyer must pretend to be dating the woman, which then sets his girlfriend off. This series has been rather hit and miss for me but the clips from Taxi, Mister seemed very funny to me and they're certainly the highlight of this film so hopefully Turner Classic Movies will show that complete film at some point (as of this writing, I believe it's the only one that haven't shown). As far as this film goes, it's clearly very lazy because it just doesn't cut and paste scenes but the entire movie is a paste job. I'm really not sure what Roach was thinking but I guess some people might have forgotten that they had already seen these movies. The first half of the film has plenty of nice laughs but I found the stuff from the second film to be rather bland and boring. That film itself is rather disappointing so there's no shock that the stuff doesn't work here either. Alan Hale, Jr. and Max Baer appear.