Beauty and the Bus: A Weird Little Artifact

Is Beauty and the Bus worth your time today? Honestly, probably not unless you are a die-hard fan of vintage slapstick or just curious about how they made comedies back when the cameras were loud and the jokes were even louder. If you hate old-school, slightly chaotic pacing or just want something that actually makes sense, you should probably skip this one entirely.

The whole premise is simple: the girls win a car in a raffle. That’s it. That is the whole engine driving this thing. It’s barely enough to hold a film together, but they try, I guess.

Watching this felt a bit like stumbling onto a set that was still being built while they were filming. The energy is all over the place. Sometimes it’s snappy, other times it just feels like everyone is waiting for someone else to say a line. It’s messy. I kind of dig that about it, though.

There’s this one moment where they’re all huddled around the car, and I swear you can see a guy in the background just trying to figure out where to stand. He looks so lost. It’s those little, tiny, accidental details that make these old shorts feel more human than some of the over-produced stuff we see now.

It’s not quite as sharp as Bottle Babies, which had a bit more of a focused punch to its humor. This one kind of meanders around the garage and the street like it lost its keys. Maybe they did lose their keys? Who knows.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Beauty and the Bus (1933) through its definitive frames.

Thelma Todd is in it, which is the main reason to even click play. She has this way of looking at the camera that makes you think she knows exactly how ridiculous the script is. She holds the whole thing together with just a smirk. She really is the only one who seems to know what year it is.

I found myself checking the runtime more than I probably should have. It’s not that it’s boring, exactly, but it feels like it’s stretching a five-minute idea into something just a bit too long. Like when you try to toast bread and it comes out just a little bit too dark. Not ruined, but you notice the burnt edges.

Compared to something like Night Life, which felt like it had a little more grit to it, this feels like a sunny day gone slightly wrong. The bus scenes are chaotic, sure, but I didn't laugh as much as I think they wanted me to. 🚌

Maybe it’s just me, but the whole "winning a car" trope has been done to death. Even back then, it felt a little bit like a reach. Still, if you want to see some classic faces doing their thing without any pressure to be 'cinema', it’s a harmless enough way to spend a few minutes.

• The car actually looks pretty great, considering.
• The extras really don't know what to do with their hands.
• Total runtime: short enough to not regret it, long enough to wonder why.

I’m not saying it’s great. I’m not saying it’s bad. It’s just... there. Like a piece of furniture you keep around even though you don't really use it. 🤷‍♂️