Poppa Knows Worst (1944) User Reviews

An Old Story

[boblipton · 6/10 · 14 October 2019]

Leon Errol has been stepping out every evening on wife Joan Blair. When an old friend comes to visit her, they devise a plan to scare Leon back to the straight and narrow. The friend sells Leon a ticket to a costume ball. There, Leon flirts with a beautiful masked stranger.... who is actually his wife!

It's not the first time this plot has appeared in the movies. In 1908's A MASKED BALL, it's D.W. Griffith who winds up making love to his wife of the screen (and reality), Linda Arvidson, at a costume party. Leon's version, of course, depends on Leon's tics and quirks and screen personality. This movie is nicely done, even if it all has been done before.

Mostly a One-Joke Comedy

[Snow Leopard · 27 August 2001]

This Leon Errol short is mostly a one-joke comedy, though it does pull off that joke fairly well. Errol is as good as ever in portraying the kind of character that he was best at, but this time the story doesn't really give him a lot of material to work with.

The movie starts when Leon's wife (played by Joan Blair, not one of Errol's regulars) gets tired of his philandering and staying out late, so she thinks up a way to teach him a lesson. Thanks to Errol's resourceful characterization of his usual conniving husband character, the main gag comes off all right. But too much of the movie is devoted to setting up just one joke, and there aren't a lot of laughs along the way, as there usually are in Errol's features.

Overall, the movie is not bad, but it's not especially creative, just another version of material that Errol performed more memorably in other pictures. It's watchable, but it's not among Errol's best comedies.